Chad stood in front of his bathroom mirror, lips curled into a sneer as he rehearsed the Renegade dance. The TikTok clip looped on his phone: a teen in a neon saggy pants twerking to a beat that sounded like a dying microwave. “This is the future,” Chad muttered, adjusting his fanny pack. “They’ll remember me as the guy who *almost* got it right.”
The town of Blessed, Oregon, had turned into a zombie apocalypse of trends. Every Tuesday, the high schoolers gathered in the parking lot to do the Renegade, their hips swaying like broken windmills. Chad, 34, had tried the Distracted Boyfriend meme, the Renegade, and even the Macarena reboot. But nothing stuck. Not until he discovered the “Cupid Shuffle” on a dusty VHS in his grandma’s basement.
“You’re late, Chad,” said Karen, his neighbor and sole friend, as she snapped a photo of him mid-rotation. “The trend died three weeks ago.”
“I’m not late,” Chad hissed, spinning into a pose that looked like a confused flamingo. “I’m… evolving.”
That night, Chad uploaded his version of the Cupid Shuffle to TikTok. The video showed him in a neon tracksuit, tripping over his own feet as he attempted a shuffle that involved more falling than dancing. Comments rolled in: “This is why we can’t have nice things.” “RIP Chad’s dignity.”
The next morning, Chad found a note on his door: “You’re the last one. Go home.” He stared at the words, tears blurring the ink. Then, with a roar that shook the town square, he launched into a solo Cupid Shuffle, spinning until his sneakers flew off. The townspeople watched in silence, then burst into applause. Chad, now a relic of a bygone era, smiled through his tears. “At least I tried,” he said, as his foot caught on a curb and he face-planted into a bush. “Ow.”
