Nobody actually knows what’s going on, but everyone is absolutely certain they do.
This is a continuation of A Tale Told in the Perplexiconistory Acts 1 & 2.
The Perplexicon Addictionary can be found here and any footnoted words are words and phrases that I use regularly, which are not part of the Perplexicon.
It may help to watch this quick 2 minute video before attempting to read this story- The Perplexiconistory PreReader Guide.
Which meant that the moment I announced a shenaniganery summit, the entire room immediately entered a quasi-pseudo-faux-synchronooized state of ultracrepidarian overdrive-esque-like-ish1 ness, if you will2.
The brofessor stood first. He puffed up his chest with the self-confidence of a man who had successfully read three headlines and half a thread on X just this morning. “Well bros,” he broclared, “clearly the solution to this entire situashit is simple.”
Chad nodded gravely. My roommate folded her arms, resolutely. The bar patrons leaned in closer, apprehensively.
The brofessor raised one finger. “We must form a direct action task force.”
The stranger beside me let out a quiet sighroll.
“A task force,” Chad repeated, obliviously.
“Yes bro,” said the brofessor. “A decentralized interdisciplinary coalition of concerned citizens dedicated to restoring our country’s narrative integrity.”
“That sounds suspiciously like a committee.” I said.
“It is not a committee,” the brofessor replied. “It is a rhizomatic coalition of brolegiate stakeholders.”
One of the quackademics leaned over from the near table. “Ah,” he said. “A demographically distributed group of individuals tasked with designing and implementing an epistemological framework by which to confront and repair the current national malaise.”
“Exactly,” said the brofessor.
“So, a quasi-pseudo-faux-committee, with no similarities to a committee outside of being, in fact, a committee, itself-esque-ish-like grouping of action oriented problem solvers and plan-trusters? This will go well.” I prophesied sarchoticly.
The stranger beside me whispered, “Observe the efic early stages of multifacetious mathturbation.”
The cringestack commentators had now joined the conversation. “First we must define the problem, vaguely, in order to avoid losing site of the forest amongst the trees.” one said.
“Yes,” said another, adjusting his scarf like a minor villain from a philosophy department. “We must aggregate a unified termware taxonomy… while keeping in mind that just because a word or phrase correlates with known termware, doesn’t mean it is termware.”
Within seconds the air filled with the unmistakable smell of cogdeg misfirings and intellectual tapioafication.
Words thickened. Ideas clumped. Thoughts coagulated. Ideologies clotted. Logic dissolved into chewy little pearls of performative certainty. And just like that, a Shenaniganery Singularity began forming.
Here’s the thing about singularities. You never notice them forming at first. In the beginning it’s just people talking. Then it’s people talking louder. Then it’s people talking louder while also believing themselves more. An early symptom of a singularity is the discoursive loop bleeding over and blocking out the actual conversation.
Soon the entire bar was spiraling like a tropical downheaval into a gravitational well of bollotics, gaslightenment, and pockets of anal-optical sclerosis with heroic levels of nerdsplaining.
One of the flaggot virtue-jerkers stood dramatically. “The real issue,” he said, “is the systemic pignorance of those who avoid social media engagement and interaction. I mean, how are those luddites supposed to learn anything?”
Another disagreed, “No, the real issue is all the rampant plan-trusting of the cruelite whoreshippers.”
The quackademic objected, “The issue is epistemic collapse caused by late-stage Intellimafia narrative capture.”
The cringestackers countered, as they always do, “The issue is malinformation propagated by anti-philanthropathic influence networks.”
Meanwhile Chad whispered to me, “Bro, I just came here for pancakes.”
“It was Pyramisu, dude. Keep it together.” I corrected.
“Oh yeah. That’s right.” He replied without registering the difference, mentally.
At the center of it all, the brofessor began drawing diagrams on a napkin. Circles. Arrows. Triangles.
At one point he drew what appeared to be a trebuchet wearing a crown.
“What is that?” I asked.
“The Puppepresident Influence Model,” he explained, picking up the napkin with the circles and arrows..
“Of course that is.” I replied, “I’m asking about the one that looks like a trebuchet.”
“That is a bright point of enlightenment atop the mechanism of power in this world.” He explained in annoyance. ”That’s the logo for the new commi…. I mean, task force.”
“Oh thank god. I was afraid we were running without proper branding, here.” I exclaimed, sounding fully satiswhelmed with the progress.
The stranger beside me finished her drink and whispered, “You see the pattern now?”
“Yes. The room has entered full lunatic edging.” I answered in a hushed conspiratorial voice.
“And the singularity?” She asked.
This question was important enough to require an alliterative response, “At most, its mass of manic madness is merely moments away.”
Across the bar the Schrodinger’s Douchebag finally opted to speak. “Well actually…”
Every head turned.
He paused, waiting to see whether he should be offensive or ironic. He settled on both. “Well actually,” he said again, “the real problem is that society has piled onto the bipolarcoaster and thus lost the inherent ability to coddiwomple toward an objective truth.”
The room went quiet. Which, statistically speaking, was the most dangerous possible outcome, because silence in a room like this means an idea is about to metastasize.
And it did… Instantly… Semantically.
The brofessor leapt up. “Yes! That’s the proper nomenclature for this existentially important task force. The Coddiwomple Initiative!”
The cringestackers nodded enthusiastically. “A decentralized pilgrimage toward epistemic clarity!”
The quackademics clapped. “A wandering simposium!”
The virtue-jerkers gasped. “A morally relativistic quest!”
Chad looked at me. “Bro, are we starting a cult?”
I stared at the napkin diagrams. The arrows. The crowned trebuchet. Then back into the middle distance where my tardlerance appeared to be hosting an open house or block party to celebrate the multitudinous shidiots of the world.
The crowd was now chanting asynchronooized off beat variations of “Coddiwomple!” like a chemically dependent flash mob.
Then I looked at the shenanigator beside me. “You planned this, didn’t you.”
She shrugged. “I merely nudged the narrative.”
“Why?” I asked chalantly.
Her smile was small, but unmistakably satiswhelmed with her many shenanigatory successes. “Because underlying systems only reveal themselves when pushed.”
In the middle of the bar the brofessor had climbed onto a chair.
“Friends!” he shouted. “We leave at dawn!”
“For where?” someone asked.
He paused, which was right when everyone realized something important. Nobody had any idea where the coddiwomple was supposed to go.
The room hesitated. The singularity wobbled.
The shenanigator beside me leaned forward and whispered, “Here comes the fun part.”
The brofessor cleared his throat. “Well obviously,” he said, stalling heroically, “the destination will be determined through a collaborative rhizomatic process of…”
Suddenly the bar door burst open, again, and a man in a suit stepped inside. The room went quiet. Behind him stood three more thematically similar men. They carried clipboards and expressions that suggested true administrative fealty.
“Excuse me,” the lead man said. “Which one of you initiated the Unauthorized Narrative Correction Assembly?”
The room froze. The brofessor slowly stepped down from his chair.
Chad whispered: “Bro, is that the government?”
The stranger beside me smiled a very different smile than any she’d smiled before.
She spoke softly. “As I said, now it gets fun.”
I knew she was right. Because if there’s one thing you should never do, it’s interrupt a room full of drunks in the exact moment they’re coalescing and congealing into a collective madness.
The man with the clipboard looked around and after a moment, continued. “Someone here, in this establishment, has been reported to us for the crime of Aggravated Shenanigan Proliferation.”
My roommate turned slowly towards me.
Chad turned slowly towards me.
The brofessor turned slowly towards me.
The bar patrons all slowly leaned in, this time towards me.
The stranger beside me simply disappeared, leaving only the words, “Well. Go on.” emanating out of the space she’d occupied moments before.
This happens to be the exact moment I realized two things, simultaneously. First that the psyoptopia had spread much further than I had previously believed and secondly, if I told them all what I had just figured out about the system we lived under, the jyhadiwomple3 wouldn’t just start. It would become unstoppable.
I was completely and utterly duned.
Arrakissed.
Desert planetted4.
I opened my mouth to speak and heard these words come out of it, “Please allow me to shelaborate all over this and I promise to eschew my usual sesquipedalian obfuscations.”
Someone snarfed and just then…
Continued in Act 4
“Quasi-pseudo-faux- <Blank> -esque-ish-like”- Translates to, “…almost similar to, but not really <whatever you are discussing> although kind of in the style of, but not exactly the same as what you might think it is…” A way of defining something as something without in any way saying or describing what it is, in actuality.
If you will- If you consent to that being your understanding. If this phrase follows an excessively omnifixed (containing exactly 6 prefixes and/or suffixes. Not to be confused with either “ultrafixed,” which would only contain 3 to 5 prefixes and/or suffixes, or “infinifixed” which would contain 7 or more prefixes and/or suffixes) word or phrase such as the one defined in footnote #1, it makes it completely subjective and even less informative. For example, one could swear under oath that, “I quasi-pseudo-faux-witnessed the suspect rob that bank and shoot all the hostages-esque-ish-like-, if you will.” without technically breaking their oath, regardless of what they actually saw, for the witness’s statement is now dependent upon the jurors to deduce and decide what the witness witnessed, in the first place.
Jyhadiwomple- A holy war or crusade fought with all the usual amount of righteous enthusiasm and vigor, but without a discernible or intelligible religious belief system to support it.
Duned. Arrakissed. Desert planetted- Finding oneself in a predicament best described, or at least analogized, as being like one found within the pages of Frank Herbert’s only entertaining novel.
Thank you for this basket of synaptic crossfirings. Better than caffeine on this daylightfull morning. How do you keep your spell checker from overheating?