I wrote a story in September. Because of recent events, I'm only posting the first part here. It's about a single father and his daughter and her favorite HBO show. Enjoy. Every Sunday night, Mark and his daughter bonded over a TV show, which for single dads is like gold. Mark hated the show, but Annabelle loved it and that was all that mattered. The Sunday night ritual, starting an hour before each episode, began with delivery. Usually, a Papa John’s Veggie special and six buffalo wings, Mark eating whichever Annabelle wouldn’t depending on her diet and temperament. They had the whole ritual down: napkins, crushed red peppers, lights lowered, credits skipped. The teaser for this episode showed the main character—a young star the same age as Annabelle— planting drugs in a popular girl’s locker because the popular girl had been flirting with her boyfriend. The episodes were all the same, equally disturbing, teenage soap operas. Everyone was fucking everyone else, and the characters not in love triangles were so sexually androgynous Mark needed to ask questions to clarify, God forbid. But this was the best it had been in a long time. When Rebecca, Annabelle’s mom, died; Annabelle disappeared. A thunderstrike that made her retreat into herself, behind the sanctified walls of her bedroom and piles of dirty clothes. Her cave was impenetrable to all forms of human science, including bribery. But Annabelle came out, every Sunday night, and usually didn’t go back until well after the post-show podcast that came on after every episode. Mark tried to be grateful for little things. But he was pretty sure that was just something people said to cope in the face of impossible hurt.  Mostly he had been dropped into an absence that he was unprepared for and embarrassed to be unable to navigate. He had learned which answers to have ready, for the unavoidable questions: “Cancer.” “Two years ago. Diagnosis in February, funeral in September.” “It was hard, but we had each other.” If it wasn’t for Anna, Mark admitted to himself some nights, he would’ve disappeared into a fresh twelve pack every morning. It all happened a few months after Mark returned from his second deployment. They had seen a therapist for a little while, but after two sessions they agreed it was growth to stop. A paper plate of pizza warmed Mark’s lap. Mark remembered how he was at that age. Nothing like the kids they watched. Mark and his friends got high, they did some shit, but not like this. The episodes kind of disturbed Mark. And whenever a sex scene occurred, always gratuitous, he did his best to ignore it, not at all move or look in any direction lest he evoke some kind of cardinal father/daughter embarrassment. There was a lot of potential for embarrassment watching The Show. The characters seemed to not do things that caused drama, but trauma. Something about the dialogue always sounded wrong to Mark, not like how people really talked. But the tradeoff was that the Show looked beautiful. The colors and filters were pleasant to watch and Mark could see why everyone liked the Show. The acting was pretty good, too. The actors did what they could with what they were given every week. The actors inhabited their characters, gave them depth. The baby-faced drug dealer was especially convincing, his mastery of everyday cynicism was rare among spoiled Gen Z actors. Mark wasn’t sure who his daughter had in the way of school friends—she mostly kept that stuff a secret from him—but he thought there was some element of companionship being supplied by the characters on the screen. Maybe that’s what acting was. Mark’s brain was brought back to the moment by the HBO static buzz. The intro played, a yearbook of images from the characters as students to really sell the point these were the kids at school, then in the same big white letters, Created By: Mark Googled the name the first time he saw it. He didn’t know what to expect, maybe some artistic, strung-out refugee with a life like the kind on screen. But Wikipedia said that wasn’t the case. The Creator’s Dad—the correct title was actually “Showrunner”— was a famous director from the 80’s. Mark had even seen some of his movies, old family favorites that survived the years. The Showrunner’s Dad had also directed a few famous music videos, back when named directors did that sort of thing. When Mark told that to Annabelle, she acted like she didn’t hear him. *** They watched two seasons, Mark testified, over three years. The Show got worse. How it probably went was after one season, closely watched and curated by HBO Execs, the Showrunner was given a blank check. No one wanted to upset the golden goose and tell him no. The writing wasn’t just lazier, it had become cruder. There were less clothes, more drugs; everyone was more compromised. What began as a show about teenagers possibly trying to relate to the chaos of today had become some kind of parody of itself, everyone needing to OD or have revenge sex, or any other form of weaponized self-harm. Annabelle seemed to be less and less interested, on her phone more, or even just staring into the nonexistent space in front of the TV, during the episodes. That’s to say there were no signs. There was one episode, Mark remembered watching with her. He played over the night several hundreds of times in his head. One of the girls in the show had a history of sexual assault and OD’d. There were several flashbacks. Anna seemed annoyed, but not more than other times. The episode left Mark with an unsettled feeling, like there was something wrong about what they had just seen, though he wasn’t sure if he had the authority to say so. The next afternoon, Mark got a call from the guidance counselor. They found her in the school bathroom. Mark dropped to his knees. He didn’t believe it at first, he was convinced they had the wrong parent, there was a horrible mistake. She didn’t even do drugs. He could hear the naivete in his own voice. He refused to believe it and, when he finally did, fought hard against the instinct to do something rash. They reviewed footage at the school and police brought students in for questioning and eventually they found what was discovered to be Fentanyl, and the male student who sold it to her. It wasn’t his first offense. That made it worse, to Mark. It was in the newspapers. Relatives sent Mark links to grief podcasts with kind messages that Mark sometimes read. There was a trial for the dealer. Mark gave a survivor impact statement at sentencing. He felt stripped of his dignity, forced into the dusty suit in his closet and waiting on a wooden bench outside the lettered courtroom to bear his pain for everyone. Beg them to “do what was right.” The dealer went to prison. Mark felt powerless. A few survivors’ groups called, asked if he wanted to be some kind of spokesperson, talk at schools. Mark told the groups he never wanted to set foot in another school again. In his worst hours, Mark asked: Was it intentional or an accident? Well, they explained to Mark, no one could know and that sort of endless questioning doesn’t help anyone. Mark didn’t ask them the other questions he asked himself; he didn’t think it was fair. Then, Mark didn’t do anything. He woke up, he drank, he watched TV, he drank, he went to bed. He didn’t know how long he lived like that. Days gave way to entire weeks. Mark told himself he must deserve this for other things he did. He didn’t bother with the VA. When Mark was deployed, there wasn’t time to feel anything. He paid attention to the details, made sure he didn’t fuck up, got the job done. He didn’t know what to do now. Eventually, when going to the store was too much trouble, Mark stopped drinking. Maybe it was natural that Mark ended up on the internet. Long nights alone, trying not to succumb to the terrible thoughts, TV paid advertising was too bleak. Mark found message boards. About grief, about the Show. Not just fans of the Show, but zealots feeling owed something, if not just consistency. People who liked it so much they hated it. When he saw his daughter’s name, he froze in his chair, feeling exposed. Someone mentioned her as a fan, it seemed like a friend from school or at least a student who knew her, and how the show was possibly affecting people, even her. Mark sobbed for a long time, until he could feel his nose buzzing. It shocked him how much raw emotion, if not liquid, he contained. And Mark saw the hate. Blocks of text that built walls of hate. All the threads about how bad the show was, for itself and for society, how inappropriately it depicted people not just in these situations but of this age and generation. The people who the show was about, and for, felt attacked by it. And by watering the seed of his loss, it grew in Mark. Why would someone make something so wicked? So morally flawed? Wasn’t there a duty to the world, as one of its storytellers, to protect those who needed the most protecting? Doctors had to take an oath, why didn’t artists? Mark started researching the Showrunner. This felt like drinking would’ve. He saw accusations, not just of being creatively bankrupt and morally unsound, but criminally depraved. The Showrunner had made a movie between seasons that had tanked, Mark heard about it: full of young adult sex and drugs, like he was a depraved trailer park child, not the son of an Oscar winner. So many viewers felt without control, like Mark, victim to what was on TV and kept hostage from a truth they weren’t being told: that they were okay. Their lives were okay and everyone felt the same as them. A little anxious, a little uncertain, a little worried, but nothing that couldn’t be solved by realizing you weren’t that different from anyone else. None of us were suspended in a constant bad voiceover with surreal lighting. Mark felt so far from anything resembling a functional member of society, like such an outsider, that he could only take a journey travelled by no one else. Maybe if he had reactivated Facebook and made a long-winded post, or reached out to a cousin a few hours away, he’d have found some tether back to the living. But how far can someone wander from the village before the duty is on the village to go out and get him? What shocked Mark the most was how easy it was to find the Showrunner. It was harder to figure out what it was the Showrunner actually did. Mark learned how TV worked. Not the tubes and airwaves, but the sausage and who made it— mostly grads from Harvard, NYU, the top film schools. Like all paramilitaries, there was a clear hierarchy. Mark learned the levels of assistants and producers. How a Co-Producer compared to a Supervising Producer. He wondered if any of them knew how to change a tire, or gut a fish. Mark emptied his savings. He loaded up his truck with his camping gear, his tools, and most of what was in his safe. It was a blur, like a child’s memory of vacation. One minute you’re in your old bed, and the next you’re driving toward Disneyland.

RT @OhYouBlockhead: public service

RT @OhYouBlockhead: you wanted to meet people in Miami. visit a strip club, maybe rent Ferraris. guys at the bar must’ve heard you mention…

RT @OhYouBlockhead: the worst part isn’t using your group chat as exit liquidity. it’s that those people are your only friends.

your grandfather came in through Ellis Island, so your dad could bartend for 30 years, so you could tell people online how smart you are and complain about memecoins.

only when prices go up, when there’s a new airdrop, when things are easy, then crypto is good. otherwise, it’s a big dumb mean casino.

set a trading budget, read self-help books, even buy a new machine, all to get rugged by a divorced 50 year old who used to sell sports betting picks.

you liked the groundbreaking tech a lot more when price was up 4x in a month.

your father gets willfully insulted at work, ignoring provocations, so he can provide a better life for his child, meanwhile you spend all day talking online in deformed meme speak, trying to get respect from losing gamblers and black sheep trust funders.

RT @OhYouBlockhead: she watches you watch the game not knowing her Valentine’s Day depends on it.

you cut the prayer line, in front of the single parents and optimistic refugees, to ask God for a Juju TD, and a Hopkins TD, and a Pacheco TD, and an AJ Brown TD, and no team to score 3 straight times.

“well, the new thing is called Yaps—“ you watch the hope vanish from your mom’s eyes, the same detached look someone has listening to a homeless person, just enough interest to not get too close.

public service

you weren’t just gambling this whole time, you were building, you were showing up every day with your head down, getting your hands dirty. you were networking, you were learning. you didn’t just waste the past two years, right?

one last cycle, you told yourself. you thought you sounded like a movie star, “one more job,” but it looks like you’re going to be employed for the rest of your life.

every gambling story is an anti-gambling story.

you wonder how many people raised money for mining claims in the Wild West then just sat around shitposting.

“who are these kids? why do they have our info? it feels dirty and illegal!” what other meaningful options are there for a 20 year old genius? learn to race bait? be a podcaster? grift federal grants? how many ancient papyrus scrolls left to decode?

Thomas Jefferson was 33 when he wrote the Declaration of Independence but you’re concerned with “posting bangers for more yaps”

by now they probably forgot about the scam chain you invested in, made your personality, then tried to dump on everyone.

“this is stealing! it’s trash! Ew!” AI discourages another Midwesterner from churning out a new coming-of-age TV show. meanwhile, somewhere on a farm house that just got internet, a grandmother generates a picture of her late husband as a drawing, using her imagination again.