Time: The far future

Place: The remains of Planet Earth

(Zoldar and Fraxwaven, two alien archaeologists newly arrived from the planet Blondark, try to make sense of the long extinct human race based on what they find in the rubble.)

Zoldar: Haven’t you got that thing booted yet?

Fraxwaven: It’s alien tech, you dwiblok. Clearly inferior, I might add. Not exactly compatible with the xenomatrix. I had it working yesterday. Just gimme a minute… There. The mainframe has degraded terribly but we can retrieve some of the data. This should give us an idea of what life was like for the inhabitants of this world.

Zoldar: (studies readout) What is a Twitter?

Fraxwaven: In what little I’ve been able to piece together, it was a foul and iniquitous god—one of a pantheon requiring followers to have unwavering loyalty– that only allowed for the transmission of banal subject matter.

Zoldar: Why do you believe that?

Fraxwaven: Look at all the discussions of meals. Most of which are addressed to an entity whose identity remains mysterious to me. I hope if we continue to dig, we might learn who “You guys” is. But for the most part, very little of actual importance is communicated.

Zoldar: Seems poor evidence to conclude that Lord Twitter was cruel.

Fraxwaven: On the surface, yes. But I’ve discovered over 300 billion messages where the users declare some variation of “I have news but cannot share.” It seems unlikely that the inhabitants would be so self-important as to withhold vital information solely for the purposes of self-gratification—I mean, only children do that, right?—so I can only conclude that these messages were discreet attempts by the residents of the world to ask for assistance from Twitter’s censorship.

Zoldar: I concur. Those poor people.

Fraxwaven: It gets worse. Have you seen their photographic abilities? Check this out.

Zoldar: (stares at screen) The colors are washed out…the edges are blurred… No one would willingly take a photo like that.

Fraxwaven: Exactly. I believe this is the work of a demi-god: Instagram. A trickster who ruins what might otherwise be a perfectly lovely photograph.

Zoldar: So these people were forced into silence, except on banal subject matters, AND they couldn’t take a decent photograph. How very, very sad for them.

Fraxwaven: I can only guess this oppression was what led them to make questionable decisions, such as in their elections. Did you know that their legislative body was comprised of bodily fluids?

Zoldar: You’re pulling my flagnar.

Fraxwaven: Nope. Check out the folder labeled ‘Google,’ then the subfolder marked ‘Santorum…’