Fictional Stories for Fictional Audiences

The Meme That Ate Ohio

Conspiracy fiction.

May 08, 2025

IRONY IS A DEAD LANGUAGE

Cleveland, Ohio. A basement that smells like Hot Pockets

Kara’s life is a graveyard of dead memes. She’s 23, but her soul’s been microwaved into a fossil. Picture this: a girl in Space Jam pajamas, hair matted into a Chernobyl bird’s nest, hunched over a Dell laptop older than her crippling student debt. Her domain? A TikTok account called @ConspiracyClownCar, where she feeds the algorithm lies so stupid they almost feel true. Like that time she “exposed” the Cleveland Cavaliers as a front for lizard people. (LeBron never denied it.)

Her latest masterpiece? 5G Chemtrails & the Cowpocalypse. A three-minute video splicing grainy VHS clips of The X-Files with fake USDA documents she Photoshopped during a NyQuil blackout. The premise: Ohio’s cows are NSA drones, their udders spraying “smart dust” to turn rural America into WiFi slaves. She ends it with a shot of her mom’s shih tzu wearing tinfoil antlers and a slogan even she cringes at: “Save the steak, smash the towers! #MooLuminati.”

She posts it at 2:37 a.m., downs a Red Bull, and passes out on a couch stained with Doritos dust.

Flashback: Kara’s origin story. Age 14, sitting cross-legged on shag carpet, watching her dad—a mustached Walmart greeter named Dale—scream at Bill O’Reilly about “deep state soy milk.” Dale’s hobbies: chain-smoking Parliaments, rewinding his JFK VHS until the tape snaps, and blaming the collapse of Blockbuster on “queer quantum physics.” Kara learns early: Truth is a joke nobody gets.

She wakes to 127 missed calls. Her phone’s vibrating so hard it dances off the coffee table.
@TruthWarrior1776 DM: “Sis, you’re a PATRIOT. The MooLuminati won’t silence us!!”
@LibsRottedMyBrain reply-guy: “This is why we need gulags.”
Her video’s at 500K views. Comments section a warzone:

“FINALLY someone exposes Big Cow!!”
“This is how my uncle Todd got into QAnon.”
“Slay, Queen Bessie 💅”

Her mom, Linda, barges in holding a burning Pop-Tart. “Kara! The news says they’re chipping the cows at Kroger!” Linda’s a Touched by an Angel republican who thinks Kamala Harris invented gluten.

Kara tries to undo it. Posts a follow-up: “JOKE! (Unless…?)” But the algorithm’s already pregnant with her lie. It spreads to Facebook mom groups, then to a militia forum called Y’allQaeda.net.

Shane, her burnout friend from community college, texts:
“K… your meme’s on Infowars. Alex Jones is auctioning ‘anti-5G cow feed.’ You broke the simulation.”

Kara’s cracked iPhone screen reflects her face like a funhouse mirror. Her eyes scream What have I done? Her mouth twitches into a grin.

The lie metastasized overnight. By dawn, #MooLuminati was trending between #FreePalestine and #BidenCrimeFamily. Lib influencers in neon crop tops posed with steak knives captioned “Guillotine the Patriarchy �🔪”, while QAnon Karens in camo-print pajamas livestreamed themselves hosing down their Angus herds with apple cider vinegar. “It neutralizes the nanochips,” drawled one, her phone angled to capture a cow’s vacant stare. The cow, unimpressed, shit audibly.

Kara tried to kill it. She posted a seven-second video slurping a McFlurry: “Y’all. It’s. A. Joke. (But stay scared! 🐮👻)” The algorithm yawned. Her disclaimer got 12 likes, mostly bots selling keto gummies. Meanwhile, Infowars hawked “Survival Milk” ($49.99, gluten-free). Her mom bought three crates.

“It’s not lactose intolerance,” Linda insisted, smearing the milk on her face like a serum. “It’s toxins.” Her shih tzu, Mr. Snuffles, lapped a puddle of it off the linoleum. Kara considered explaining satire. Then she remembered her dad’s funeral—how Linda had blamed his heart attack on “Wi-Fi cholesterol.” Truth was a disco ball: shiny, fractured, and everyone saw their own reflection.

Shane showed up at 3 a.m., reeking of weed and existential dread. “Jedediah ‘Jed’ Barnes,” he said, shoving his phone in her face. A forum thread glowed: Y’allQaeda.net/operation-moo-freedom. Jed’s profile pic: a Confederate flag photoshopped onto a Holstein. His bio: “Patriot. Rancher. Bovine Liberator.”

“He’s organizing a ‘rescue’ at the county fair,” Shane said. “They’re bringing pitchforks. And flamethrowers. Flamethrowers, K.”

Kara clicked. Jed’s livestream filled the room with pixelated rage. “Them NSA cows ain’t just spyin’!” he barked, pacing a barn littered with Monster Energy cans. “They’re replacing us. My cousin Earl—rest his soul—got licked by one, and now he texts in emojis!” The chat roared: 🚜🔥🐄.

She closed the laptop. The room buzzed, fluorescent and feverish. Shane peeled the foil off a pudding cup. “You gonna fix this?”

“How?”

“I dunno. Show your tits on TikTok. Distract the hive-mind.”

She threw a Dorito at him. It stuck to his No Fear shirt, crucified by static.

The death threat came at sunrise. Kara found it etched into her Corolla’s windshield with a house key: #MOOLUMINATI = TRAITORS. A smiley face punctuated the T. Classic.

She laughed. Then cried. Then laughed-cried, a wet, guttural sound that scared Mr. Snuffles. Shane slept on the couch, snoring through the chaos. Linda wandered in, clutching a jar of “detoxed” mayo. “You’re famous!” she chirped. “Like that Kardashian hussy!”

Kara stared at the car. The morning sun bled pink through the cracks. Somewhere, Jed’s flamethrower coughed awake. Somewhere, a cow chewed cud, oblivious.

The algorithm, forever hungry, licked its teeth.

The highway unspooled like a bad VHS tape, static and endless. Kara drove, white-knuckling a steering wheel sticky with Mountain Dew. Shane rode shotgun, feet on the dash, rolling a joint with the focus of a bomb squad tech. “Road trip rule,” he said, licking the paper. “Driver picks the music. Shotgun shuts his cakehole.”

The Corolla’s radio spat static. Then, a preacher’s voice, crisp and manic: “—demonic frequencies in the udders, brothers! The mark of the beast is a barcode!” Shane snorted. “Your fan club’s got range.”

They stopped at a gas station outside Lima, Ohio—a concrete shack with a flickering sign: JESUS > 5G. Inside, the clerk hawked tinfoil hats from a cardboard box labeled “Prepper Specials.”

“Blocks the nano-shit,” he said, tapping his own hat, folded into a swan. “Also works as a popcorn bowl. Multitasking, like Jesus intended.”

Kara bought a hat. Shane bought beef jerky and a Hustler from ‘98. The clerk winked. “That one’s a classic. Pamela Anderson’s in her prime.”

Back on the road, the sky bruised purple. Shane lit the joint, smoke curling into the shape of question marks. “Remember when the internet was just porn and Dancing Baby?”

“Remember when air wasn’t a conspiracy?”

The fairgrounds loomed at dusk—neon lights clawing at the dark. Kara parked beside a pickup flying a “Don’t Tread on Moo” flag. The air smelled of fried dough and impending stupidity.

Inside: carnage in acid Technicolor. A Ferris wheel creaked, riderless. A militia guy in a “This Machine Kills Fa**ots” shirt rigged a pie booth with C-4. “Blueberry’s the primer,” he told his buddy. “Cherry’s the payload. Merica.”

Kara spotted a news van. She sprinted, shoved her phone in a reporter’s face—a blonde with Botox paralysis. “It’s fake! I made it up! Tell them!”

The reporter eyed her like a lint roller. “Honey, you’re not story. You’re content.” She nodded to her cameraman. “Get the pyro. We’re going live at crazy o’clock.”

Then—feedback screech. Jed’s voice boomed from a megaphone. He stood on a hay bale, a flamethrower slung over his Carhartt overalls. “Y’all ever seen The Matrix?!” The crowd oozed closer: grizzled farmers clutching AR-15s, e-girls in cow-print bikinis taking selfies. “COWS ARE THE MATRIX! THEY’RE PLUGGIN’ US INTO THE CLOUD!”

A teen in a *Blink-182* hoodie raised a lighter. “Fuck the cloud!”

“FUCK THE CLOUD!” the mob chanted.

Shane nudged Kara. “This your legacy. A town hall meeting directed by Michael Bay.”

She grabbed a funnel cake, crammed it in her mouth. Sugar and shame. “I wanna go home.”

“Home’s a data center now. We’re all just cookies.”

A grandma in a “Kiss Me, I’m QAnon” apron lunged at Shane, cattle prod sparking. “Antifa cow-fucker!”

He yelped, dodged. “I’m vegan, you cryptid!”

The prod grazed his thigh. He convulsed, cartoonish, and fell into a pig trough. The crowd roared. Kara reached for him—

A gunshot cracked.

Silence.

Then, mooing.

A cow plodded into the fray, dumb as Eden, dragging its severed NSA collar.

Jed aimed his flamethrower. “DEMON!”

Kara’s scream died in the roar of ignition.

The night burned.

The cow erupted in a geyser of sparks, silicon flesh melting like cheap plastic. Turns out Jed was half-right—it was a drone, just not NSA. Some crypto-bro’s abandoned NFT project, left to graze in the Ohio wilds. The crowd gasped, phones aloft, as the robo-cow’s speakers blared: “Moooo-nopoly is a game of lies! Invest in Dogecoin!”

Chaos metastasized. The C-4 pies detonated, launching blueberry shrapnel into a cotton candy stand. Flaming sugar rained down. A militia guy screamed, “FALSE FLAG!” as his beard caught fire. Teens Livestreamed their last words: “If I die, avenge my Snap streak—”

Kara crawled through the carnage, Shane’s limp body slung over her shoulder. She dumped him into a pigpen, slapped him awake. “We’re leaving.”

“Nah,” he coughed, grinning blood-red. “I’m gonna haunt this place. First ghost with a No Fear tattoo.”

A cop tackled Jed mid-flamethrower sermon. “YOU’RE IN CAHOOTS WITH BIG DAIRY!” he howled, as cuffs clicked. The news van burned, reporter smearing ash into “breaking news” contour.

Kara ran. The Corolla’s engine screamed. She hit the highway, rearview mirror full of smoke and strobe lights.

Three Days Later:

A motel outside Toledo. Peeling Shrek 2 wallpaper. Kara hunched over a burner laptop, streaming to 2 million anons.

“It was a joke,” she rasped, pupils dilated from three Red Bulls and a spiritual awakening. “We’re all just… lol.”

The chat raged:

Crisis actor!
Queen of the Cowpocalypse!
What’s your skincare routine???

She laughed—a broken, airless sound. “Y’know what’s real? Nothing. The internet’s a Ouija board, and we’re all just ghosts fingering the planchette.”

A glitch sliced the feed. The screen pixelated into bovine static. Letters dripped like udder milk:

#MOO

Then, a new video auto-played.

Footage: The fair’s ashes. A new sign: MooLuminati HQ. Pilgrims in cow costumes circled a charred Ferris wheel, chanting.

A close-up: Shane, alive(?), now dressed as a cybernetic shepherd, preaching to the flock.

“The Cowpocalypse is currency!” he barked, a QR code tattooed on his forehead. “Scan to accept Bessie as your lord!”

The camera panned to Jed, out of jail, selling “MooGuns” (Super Soakers filled with kombucha). “It’s a spiritual cleanse and a laxative!”

Kara’s scream was lost in the buffer.

Her screen flickered one last truth:

YOU ARE NOW A MEME. THANK YOU FOR PARTICIPATING IN YOUR OWN OBSOLESCENCE.

She unplugged. The room went dark.

Somewhere, a dial-up tone hummed.

Somewhere, a cow laughed.

In the beginning, there was the meme. And the meme was shit. And the shit was good.

Thank you!

1. Title: The Meme That Ate Ohio

Logline: A snarky college student’s parody conspiracy theory about “5G chemtrails turning frogs into surveillance drones” accidentally ignites a viral movement—and a violent showdown at a rural county fair.

Pitch:
Zara, a Gen-Z satirist, creates a TikTok series mocking anti-science movements by inventing increasingly absurd conspiracies. Her magnum opus: a polished “documentary” claiming 5G towers are spraying Ohio’s farmland with “smart dust” to turn livestock into NSA spies. But when QAnon-adjacent groups repost her video unironically, it goes supernova. A fringe militia, convinced Zara is a “truth-teller,” storms a county fair to “liberate” the cows. Zara races to Ohio to debunk her own hoax, only to find her ironic hashtag (#Cowpocalypse) plastered on MAGA hats and MSNBC panic segments alike. Trapped between angry farmers and true believers, she must decide: confess and risk martyrdom, or let the lie metastasize.

Themes: Satire as a weapon backfires; the line between irony and ideology.
Real-World Tie: Echoes QAnon’s “Save the Children” hysteria and the 2020 Capitol riot’s meme-driven chaos.

2. Title: Blessed Be the Glow Cloud

Logline: A struggling pastor’s joke about a “Wi-Fi exorcism” goes viral, spawning a hybrid cult of tech-phobic zealots and nihilistic meme lords—all convinced he’s their prophet.

Pitch:
Rev. Caleb, a burned-out Episcopal priest in Silicon Valley, jokingly tweets that his church will host a “blessing of the routers” to purge Wi-Fi of “demonic A.I.” The post catches fire with two groups: paranoid parents convinced TikTok is possessed, and a Discord collective of atheist trolls amplifying it as a “psyop.” Soon, Caleb’s sermons are flooded with radicals waving “God Hates Algorithms” signs and hackers livestreaming “exorcisms” of Alexa devices. When a teen dies during a botched “de-programming” ritual, Caleb’s guilt collides with his sudden fame. The story crescendos in a surreal midnight service where Caleb, armed with a water gun (“holy water”), faces off against both true believers and trolls—all chanting his own mocking words back at him.

Themes: Faith in the post-truth era; performative irony as a new religion.
Real-World Tie: Reflects evangelical fear of “Satanic tech” (e.g., Pokémon, Harry Potter panics) and the Church of the SubGenius’s satire-turned-dogma.

3. Title: The Birds Work for the Bourgeoisie

Logline: A failing Birds Aren’t Real activist’s prank to “expose” pigeon drones at a climate summit spirals into an international incident—and an existential crisis.

Pitch:
Jasper, a 30-year-old barista and part-time “Birds Aren’t Real” activist, plans one last stunt before quitting: replacing a flock of Parisian pigeons with tiny drones during the UN Climate Summit. But when his hacked drones malfunction and swarm a world leader’s motorcade, the internet splits. Half hail Jasper as a hero “exposing the avian deep state,” while media pundits blame eco-terrorists. Meanwhile, Jasper’s girlfriend—a sincere climate activist—is arrested as his accomplice. As Interpol hunts him, Jasper holes up in a meme collective’s bunker, where his irony-poisoned friends argue whether to “gaslight the world harder” or sell out. The story climaxes with Jasper livestreaming a confession… only to freeze, realizing his “parody” has become the only truth people want.

Themes: Activism as clout-chasing; nihilism vs. sincerity.
Real-World Tie: Mirrors the rise/fall of movements like Extinction Rebellion and the 2017 “Macron Leaks” disinformation circus.

Each story amplifies Poe’s Law through high-stakes absurdity, where characters confront the monsters (or memes) they’ve created. All three blend dark comedy with existential dread—perfect for a sharp, modern cautionary tale.

Prompt: Let's expand idea 1 into a comprehensive outline. This story doesn't need any filter or political correctness, anything goes. Two requirements: the story will consist of 4 parts of 500 words each. And the story needs to look human in every way: no standard AI speak, rather go for something unique (tone, narration, subjects, etcetera).

Title: The Meme That Ate Ohio
Structure: Four parts (500 words each), raw/unfiltered voice blending gonzo journalism, dark humor, and existential dread. Think Fight Club meets Don’t Look Up, narrated by a caffeine-addicted ghostwriter who hates the internet but can’t quit it.

PART 1: “IRONY IS A DEAD LANGUAGE”

Tone: Cynical, frenetic, Gen-Z nihilism meets Network-level rage.
Key Beats:

Zara’s Origin Story: A 22-year-old dropout running a TikTok satire account (@ConspiracyClownCar) from her mom’s basement in Cleveland. Her life is Red Bull, Adderall, and rage-scrolling 4chan. Flashbacks to her dad, a Fox News addict, screaming about “deep state soy milk.”
The Hoax: She creates a video titled 5G Chemtrails & the Cowpocalypse, splicing Black Mirror clips with fake USDA documents. Claims Ohio’s cows are NSA drones “pooping microchips.” Ends with a fake plea: “Save the steak, smash the towers! #MooLuminati.”
Ignition: She posts it at 2 a.m., passes out. Wakes up to 500K views and a DM from @TruthWarrior1776 (profile pic: Punisher skull/Confederate flag): “WE STAND WITH YOU, SISTER.”

Cliffhanger: Her stoner friend Marco texts: “Z… your meme’s on Infowars.”

PART 2: “THE ALGORITHM EATS ITS YOUNG”

Tone: Paranoia/thriller, The Social Network on meth.
Key Beats:

Viral Hell: The video infects both extremes. Lib influencers ironically hashtag #Cowpocalypse while QAnon Karens livestream themselves “detoxing” cows with bleach. News outlets air debates: “Is Big Ag silencing this brave teen?”
Zara’s Descent: She tries to debunk it—posts “IT’S A JOKE” disclaimers—but they’re drowned out by conspiracyfluencers. Her mom believes the hoax (“I knew Bud Light was spyware!”).
The Militia: Meet Jed, a flat-earth libertarian with a meth-grin and a militia called “The Sons of Udder.” They plan to “liberate” the county fair’s livestock. Jed’s manifesto quote: “The only good cow is a dead cow… or a free cow. Idk, the Bible’s fuzzy on that.”

Cliffhanger: Zara finds a #MooLuminati death threat carved into her car.

PART 3: “GOD’S A SHITPOSTER”

Tone: Surreal, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas meets No Country for Old Men.
Key Beats:

Road Trip: Zara and Marco drive to Ohio in a rusted Corolla, armed with a phone charger and existential doom. They stop at a gas station where the clerk sells “5G-blocker” tinfoil hats. Local radio warns of “cow insurgents.”
The Fair: They arrive at the county fair—Ferris wheels, funnel cakes, and a militia setting up IEDs disguised as prize-winning pies. Zara tries to confess to a reporter, who shrugs: “Honey, truth’s bad for ratings.”
Jed’s Sermon: Jed rallies his men with a stolen megaphone: “Y’all ever seen The Matrix? COWS ARE THE MATRIX!” The crowd—half angry farmers, half TikTok teens here for the drama—chants: “Moo. Moo. Moo.”

Cliffhanger: Marco is mistaken for an “Antifa cow-sympathizer” and tackled by a grandma with a cattle prod.

PART 4: “EVERYTHING IS BULLSHIT”

Tone: Apocalyptic absurdity, Dr. Strangelove’s finale meets Bo Burnham: Inside.
Key Beats:

Chaos: The militia opens fire on a “NSA cow” (a confused Holstein). Police arrive, tasering a man in a cow costume. Zara hijacks the fair’s PA system, screaming: “I MADE IT UP! WE’RE ALL DUMBASSES!” No one hears her—the crowd’s too busy filming.
The Aftermath: The fair burns. Jed’s arrested mid-rant about “chemtrail communion wine.” Zara’s video hits 10M views. News labels her a “domestic terrorist” and “hero of free speech” in the same ticker.
Epilogue: Zara, now a fugitive, streams from a burner account: “Want my final truth? None of this matters. The internet’s just a piss-filled balloon. Pop it.” She signs off—her screen glitches, replaced by a single word: #MOO.

Final Line: “In the beginning, there was the meme. And the meme was shit. And the shit was good.”

Voice & Style:

Narration: First-person plural (“We wanted to laugh, but the joke wore our skin now”).
Text Intercuts: Twitter threads, garbled police scanners, TikTok comments scrolling like a Greek chorus (“Slay, Queen Bessie!” / “This is how Waco started”).
Metaphors: The internet as a “digital cancer,” memes as “ghosts in the machine fucking us back.”

Why It Works: It weaponizes absurdity to mirror real-world disinformation (e.g., Pizzagate), but with a frenzied, unhinged voice that avoids preachiness. Think Succession’s dialogue meets Chuck Palahniuk’s grunge philosophy.

Prompt: Instead of Zara, call our protagonist Kara. If you're using other character names, give them a familiar 1990s sound. Now write part [1,2,3,4] of 4. Stick to the outline: if that mentions (for example) a good last line, USE IT.