Kevin, a 37-year-old man with a LinkedIn profile titled ‘Digital Marketing Guru,’ stared at his phone, jaw clenched. The town of Boringburg had just discovered the ‘Renegade’ dance, and Kevin was *not* part of the cool kids’ group chat. He’d spent three hours rewatching the video, memorizing every twitch of the dancer’s wrist. ‘I’ve got this,’ he muttered, stepping into his living room. His cat, Mr. Whiskers, stared back like he’d seen this before.
The first note hit. Kevin flailed his arms, accidentally knocking over a lamp. The second note: he tripped over his own feet, landing in a pile of expired cereal. By the third note, he’d somehow managed to trap himself in a yoga mat. The door burst open—his neighbor, Linda, a woman who’d once tried to monetize her cactus collection, stood there with a clipboard. ‘Kevin,’ she said, ‘you’re doing it wrong.’
He didn’t listen. He never listened. By 3 a.m., Kevin had invented the ‘Kevin Dance,’ which involved screaming into a blender and then pretending to be a statue. The next day, Boringburg’s entire population was doing it. The TikTok algorithm, ever hungry, picked it up. Suddenly, Kevin was viral. His phone exploded with notifications. A million people were doing the ‘Kevin Dance.’
But here’s the thing about trends: they’re like glitter. They stick everywhere. And Kevin? He’d already moved on to the ‘I’m Not a Bot’ challenge, which involved staring into a camera and whispering, ‘I am not a bot.’ The end.
