Brenda stared at her phone, fingers trembling. The TikTok dance challenge was live: #BopOrDie, a glitchy routine involving 12 consecutive spins and a yell of “YEEHAW!” She’d spent three hours perfecting it, fueled by expired energy drinks and regret. Her apartment smelled like burnt popcorn and desperation.
“You’re gonna be famous, Brenda,” she whispered to her cat, Gary, who stared back like a judge. “This is the one. The algo’s gonna eat me up.” She hit record.
The first spin was smooth. The second? A wobble. By the third, her socks slid across the hardwood like greased penguins. Then—*blip*—the screen froze. A pixelated rabbit appeared, wearing a tiny bowtie and holding a clipboard. “Error 404: Creator not found,” it said in a voice that sounded like a kazoo.
Brenda screamed. The rabbit blinked. “Initiating crossover protocol. Prepare for chaos.”
Suddenly, her living room dissolved. She was now in a neon-lit anime gym, surrounded by 100 identical Brendas doing the dance at 300% speed. One shouted, “Why’s your spin so… *sloppy*?” Another added, “Your yeehaw lacks conviction!”
Panicked, Brenda tried to exit the app. Instead, she glitched into a 1980s commercial for “Tangy Snack Sticks,” where a talking taco yelled, “You’re fired!” She backflipped into a YouTube comment section, where a user named @DadJokes42 wrote, “This is why we can’t have nice things.”
By midnight, Brenda was trapped in a TikTok limbo, her dance now a meme titled “Brenda’s Existential Spiral.” But as she spun again—this time with a kazoo in her mouth—something shifted. The algorithm *loved* it. Her follower count exploded. The rabbit returned, grinning. “Congratulations. You’re now a trend. Now please, stop yelling “YEEHAW!” at 2 a.m.”
Brenda smiled. Maybe fame was just a glitch away.
