I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom

by Jason Pargin

“My grandfather,” continued Ether, “who I basically never talk to anymore, one hundred percent believes Christ is going to return to earth at any minute to bring about the apocalypse, due to mankind’s sinfulness. He believes everything he watches on the news is a sign: encroaching Communism, the Satanic conspiracy to allow gays to marry, race-mixing, debauchery, pornography, drag queens, the QAnon child sex cult, the climate change ‘hoax’ he says has fooled the world. He has a TV on every minute he’s awake, tuned to these ultra-right-wing news outlets ranting about depravity.” “I know old guys like that,” said Abbott. “My dad works with a couple. They’re nuts. You can’t even talk to them.” “So we can agree that, purely via the carefully filtered media a person consumes, they can come to fully believe in an apocalypse that is not, in fact, occurring?”