On a chilly March morning, former Vice President Al Gore awoke with a start. He had left the TV news on overnight in his otherwise dark bedroom, the stories of the day flickering into his subconscious. His dreams had been nightmares, full of internet-related horrors: cyber-attacks, misinformation campaigns, not being able to type his password when trying to log in for a final exam for a class he forgot to go to all semester.
He had meant well when he “took the initiative to create this whole internet thing.” He thought it would lead to a grand marketplace of ideas, fostering a global community that would work together in harmony to solve problems and play spirited but friendly games of Pong. Instead, it turned into a cash grab by the already-wealthy, leading to a factioning of people and ideas, further concentrating money and power in the hands of ultra-rich white men, with everyone else alone together in their basements, alternatively doxxing each other and watching free pornography (or so he had heard).
Access to the internet over public airwaves should be free for all, he thought, not dependent on everyone having to rent or buy their own router that only their adult children can help them troubleshoot over the phone every three weeks. And the emails—there are just too many goddamn emails! Sure it made communication faster, but at what cost? What percent of emails are just the word “thanks?” he wondered out loud. Still sweaty from his fitful sleep, Gore looked at himself in the mirror and faced the most inconvenient truth of all.
He hastily packed a bag and set off for the marina, in preparation for diving deep into the Atlantic Ocean. No one would know it was him, he thought, as he drove on backroads under the cover of darkness. As he approached an overpass, he noticed a man wearing a work shirt he could swear was embroidered with the name “Chad” hanging out idly by a bush behind a streetlight, drinking something from a brown paper bag. Gore quickly ducked his head and pulled his baseball cap down lower to avoid recognition. He would not be defeated the same way twice.
Aboard the SS Tipper, a relic of a simpler time, he yelled “what monster have I created?!” into an unsympathetic sea while he suited up in SCUBA gear, clutching one of his several pairs of novelty ceremonial scissors. As he descended into the water, he recalled reading an article about how sharks were strangely attracted to the internet cables at the bottom of the sea, and eventually companies had to wrap their cables in spiky shark-deterrent wiring. He saw the sharks circling closer and closer to the shiny cable below, drawn in by something that seemed to have unlimited mystical promise but would ultimately hurt them if they got too close, but couldn’t think of a good metaphor for how the internet had affected humanity.
Eventually, he reached the ocean floor and steadied himself for the final part of his plan. With a deep breath, through his SCUBA mask he somehow whispered: “I invented you, and now I must destroy you!” as he plunged the scissors into the sand around the thick cable, pulling the giant handles together in a slow and controlled motion. At this moment, he realized that if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, it does make a sound. Were all of his metaphors nature-related? He made a note to branch out from his usual routine of watching nature documentaries from sunup to sundown in an effort to find a loophole in the climate crisis. Oh god, “branch out”—he had done it again.
As he somberly began his ascent, Gore breathed a sigh of relief. Though he felt a slight pang of regret when he realized people would no longer be able to easily look up how hot he was when he was younger, he reminded himself that if no one ever has to awkwardly tell someone else they are on mute again, this will have all been worth it.
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Meg Reid is a satirist and humor writer. She is a contributor to The Onion, Reductress, and McSweeney’s, and has published in Points in Case, The Weekly Humorist, Slackjaw, and The Belladonna. You can find her shining a bright light on social inequality, political hypocrisy, and menus in hip, dark restaurants. And now also on Substack.