Review: Existential Threats

Afterpay

Impact: Destructive

If that Facebook post your auntie shared is anything to go by, Afterpay will bring about the demise of us all. Thanks to this capitalist trap, our generation can now spend even more on material goods without actually earning the money to afford them. This could end up leaving every young person vulnerable to debt and stern judgement from their multiple-home-owning parents. Whether it’s a dress, a drink bottle, or the sovereign territory of Greenland, humans will start buying anything and everything with Afterpay, and consumerism will go into overdrive.

Uber Eats

Impact: Calamitous

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s your Macca’s meal deal being transported via an Uber Elevate hovercraft! As technology evolves, people devolve; a point highlighted by the fact that we’re now not only too lazy to cook food, but too lazy to go get it. The faster Uber Eats expands, the faster we will forget how the human body is even supposed to move. Eventually we will spend our remaining days bedridden, reduced to washing our 800-pound whale-like bodies with a rag on a stick.

Avocado

Impact: Disastrous

The year is 2030 and the market has crashed so badly that houses are now valued at merely two thirds of the average smashed avo on rye. There are millions of empty affordable houses available just waiting to be occupied, but every millennial still alive refuses to live in them. Instead, brunch has become the epitome of wealth, and the millennial is dedicating their entire income to consuming as much avocado as humanly possible. In the process, the entire global economy is brought to a grinding halt.

Instagram hiding likes

Impact: Cataclysmic

Earlier this year, Instagram decided it would hide the number of likes visible on people’s posts, leaving thousands of ‘influencers’ without… influence? With people now not knowing which European model to vicariously ‘live through’, panic will ensue and before we know it, society as a whole will descend into total anarchy. It’s projected that if Instagram doesn’t stop hiding like figures, users will start using Myspace again – a truly cataclysmic outcome.

Verse Magazine

Impact: Apocalyptic

We’re breaking the fourth wall for this one. Students have reportedly become so hooked on reading Verse that the magazine has been classified by ASIO as more addictive than heroin, morphine and listening to ABBA combined. Reports have emerged revealing that readers are dying of starvation as they’re refusing to eat or do anything other than read Verse. No aviation students have been affected though, owing to their inability to read. May those that have passed due to excessive reading rest in peace; but at least they died knowing which obscure sex position their star sign represents.

Words by Ryan Colsey

Illustrations by Oliver White

This piece was originally published in Edition 31.

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