You’re on your phone. You are refreshing the latest Facebook trending topics, because you have reached the point at which it has become simply too much to read any news article that requires more than twenty seconds of your time and over one sentence’s worth of a description. The topics refuse to load, so you relentlessly and repeatedly swipe down the screen in an effort to magically pull the trending topics out of the internet itself. The page loads, just as you begin to lose interest. You barely know who Mike Huckabee is, yet somehow he is trending again. You receive a Twitter notification (a “chirp,” if you will). @ItsYaBoiiiChris6968 has just favorited your tweet. You should probably call Chris and remind him that he is not in the eighth grade anymore and that it is as good a time as ever for him to update his Twitter handle. You’ll call him later because you just received an influx of seemingly alarming notifications.
CNN:“Red Alert: Zombie Apocalypse Ravages the Nation.”
Buzzfeed: “It’s Brain-ing Men! Zombies Attack the Big Apple While Keeping it Stylish.”
NBC: “Zombie Apocalypse Arrives; Thousands Dead in Attacks.”
Text message from Mom: “R u inside? Don’t go out. zombies r out. love, mom”
Cosmo: “Undead in Bed: How to Channel Your Hottest Inner Zombie During This Sexy Attack!”
Fox News: “Hilary Releases Zombie Army in Attempt to Thwart Trump.”
You check Facebook again. “Zombiepocalypse” is the top trending topic worldwide. Number two is Mariah Carey. You are understandably uneasy and turn on the television upon your arrival home. Anderson Cooper is recounting the updated death toll while donning a hazmat suit. You wonder how he pulls it off so well. The camera suddenly falls to the ground, and crew members are running and screaming as the studio bursts into flames before your very eyes. Soon after, an emergency press conference is broadcast live from the White House. President Obama informs you, and the rest of the American public, that a blood-hungry zombie army has arisen from the dead and the human population will be slowly and surely desolated unless you remain indoors and keep all windows and doors locked. Scientists, so credible that they have degrees you never even knew existed from schools that are apparently prestigious according to rankings based solely on endowment, urge the general public to stay inside. You are unsettled by the news and wonder how this will effect the date you have with Chris next week, but a mere twenty minutes later your urgent news programming is interrupted by an alarming report from TMZ’s Harvey Levin chronicling the latest feud between Blue Ivy and North West. Thereafter, between commercials alerting you of an upcoming news story concerning Bernie Sander’s favorite sneaker brand premiering at 10, Mario Lopez pleads the audience to check out extra.com for a chance to win an all-expenses paid summer getaway to a resort in Tehran, Iran by voting on which female celebrity most closely resembled a muppet this week. It’s a toss-up between Charlize Theron and Rosie O’Donnell, but you go Rosie.
By the following morning, you awake to Robin Roberts’s voice informing the American people about Hollywood’s latest diet trend, in which women inject kale into their armpits. Facebook is abuzz with news of the latest attempt by republicans to strip away a woman’s right to free healthcare. Donald Trump said something dumb again. Kim Kardashian is pregnant again (or maybe she’s just still pregnant). The women of The View are interviewing the pizza rat, and you realize that, until stumbling upon the program, you had completely forgotten that both the pizza rat and the women of The View had ever even existed. You can’t help but feel as though there was something important that you were supposed to remember. Oh, right! You had to call Chris. Unfortunately, before you even had a chance to call, a zombie has promptly entered your apartment through an open window and has unfortunately gauged out your throat. Your name was a worldwide Twitter trend for forty-five minutes, until you were replaced by a story about a high school student who put super-glue in a freshman’s hair and, later, the fall of Libya to the zombies.