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

by Jason Pargin

“That’s great, when I get back to my phone, I’ll go to Wikipedia and read about how fascists are taking over every government in the Western world.” “Yes! Exactly! And that’s happening because all of those extremists are selling the same blatant lie: ‘The world is falling apart, and we have to get back what they took from us.’ At that point, it’s always just a matter of deciding which vulnerable group to pin the blame on. And it works because their followers are also living in the black box of doom, where screens tell them everything outside their front door is a chaotic hellworld. People become bitter monsters because the box tells them that’s the only defense against a world gone mad, so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s like I’ve woken up in a world where everyone not only believes the earth is flat but they’re really, really angry about it. And they reject any evidence to the contrary because they prefer to be—” “Oh, goddamn it,” grunted Abbott. “It says these Takis expired a month ago. Shit, I knew they tasted off.”