Tempokai

  Once upon a particurly stupid corner of the internet—a vast, desote wastend where intellects go to wither and neurons decay—there emerged a thread. It was neither good nor evil, wise nor foolish, yet its purpose was beautifully vacuous: “Last to comment wins.”

  And lo, the hordes did come. Keyboard warriors, insomniac gremlins, and office workers on company time flocked to this monument to pointlessness. With a fervor only seen in moths hurling themselves into bug zappers, these creatures posted, and posted again, each time thinking, “Ah, this comment—this one—shall crown me eternal victor of… well, I’m not sure, but surely it matters.”

  In this virtual purgatory lived a particur specimen: The Dude Who Is Winning Currently. Ah yes, a man whose ego was as delicate as it was overinfted. He took his victories where they could be found—preferably low-hanging, meaningless, and utterly unearned. He lived for threads like these, cwing his way up the empty dder, sitting at its imaginary summit, waving an invisible fg that read: “I am winning currently.”

  The Dude made his grand decration at 2:47 AM.

  “I AM WINNING CURRENTLY.”

  Capital letters, as we all know, add a kind of unearned authority to the profoundly unimpressive. Like shouting at pigeons, the louder one types, the more it feels like victory. He pressed “post,” leaned back in his wobbly chair, and smiled as if he’d just cured cancer.

  “Ha,” he thought smugly. “Take that, peasants.”

  As, the internet was not so kind. The moment his victorious procmation hit the digital ether, a reply appeared beneath it—posted by a faceless rival whose only crime was existing two seconds ter.

  “Not anymore. :)”

  Ah, the smiley face. The universal shorthand for “I hate you, but I’m polite about it.” The Dude felt a cold sweat. His cursor hovered ominously over the comment box. Was he… losing? But no! It could not be. For what was he losing, exactly? Did it matter? Was there a prize? Some great reward in the void beyond all this clicking and scrolling? He did not know, and yet he knew he had to type.

  And so began a tale as old as time: a pissing contest between people whose bdders are infinite and their dignity nonexistent.

  Hours passed. Days, maybe. Who can keep track in a pce where nothing ever changes, and clocks don’t matter? The Dude posted again:

  “Still winning.”

  And again:

  “I AM WINNING NOW.”

  But every moment was met with some unseen challenger whispering their treasonous response, undoing him:

  “Not anymore. :)”

  Some of these responses were automated bots. Some were trolls. Some were sentient reflections of his own fractured mind, a metaphor he was far too dull to recognize. But he fought on.

  His friends grew concerned. “You haven’t left your room in days, man. What are you doing?”

  “Winning.”

  His mother called. “When are you getting a job?”

  “Mom, I am literally winning right now.”

  His bills piled up. He hadn’t showered. Civilization moved on while he sank deeper into the existential mud pit he mistook for an arena.

  In a moment of rare, accidental introspection—between bites of stale chips and his hundredth post of “Still me, lol”—The Dude paused. He stared into the void of his screen and whispered:

  “But… what happens when I actually win?”

  The question hung in the air like an unwashed sock.

  If he were truly the st to comment—if all the trolls packed up their keyboards and walked away, if the bots went offline, if the thread died and the sun exploded—what then? Would the internet erupt into appuse? Would confetti fall from the sky? Would Jeff Bezos himself descend from his Amazonian spaceship to hand him a golden trophy that reads, “World Champion of Typing Dumb Things”?

  Or would he simply be left alone, a king on a throne of dust, surrounded by silence?

  “Maybe…” he thought, swallowing a rising panic, “maybe it’s not about winning. Maybe it’s just about… keeping the game alive.”

  But then, nah. That sounded like some loser garbage. He cracked his knuckles and typed again.

  “I AM STILL WINNING CURRENTLY.”

  What The Dude failed to realize—what everyone in the void failed to realize—is that in the game of “Last to Comment Wins,” no one wins. Ever. To cim victory is to admit defeat, for only those who abandon the thread truly escape it. Winning is not achieved by posting but by logging out, stepping outside, and breathing air that doesn’t come from a fan in a windowless room.

  But let’s not give The Dude too much credit. He didn’t escape. He didn’t grow. He didn’t learn anything. In fact, as you’re reading this, he’s probably still there, cwing at his keyboard with the desperation of a man who thinks he can drink water from a mirage.

  And if you’re wondering, “What happened to him in the end?” I’ll tell you this much:

  He’s winning currently.

  Until you comment.

  :)