Disclaimer: This is satire; irony, humor, and ridicule are used to expose and criticize the stupidity or vices of others. What this means is that if you find yourself agreeing with the sentiment in this article, we’re making fun of you. Sorry.

Dear reader, I, at 17 years old, have come to stand at a threshold. The cool breeze of adulthood is still gentle, almost refreshing at this vantage point. However, some kind of animal instinct, like that of a deer seeking shelter before a storm, warns me that this gentle breeze will become a wind; the wind, a storm; the storm, a hurricane. And I am afraid, dear reader, of being knocked on my ass. So I have made the decision to avoid adulthood entirely and instead become an Instagram model.

Any good American knows that the real dream is to be rich and famous for doing absolutely nothing. I wish to land myself in a situation where I can literally take a selfie wearing Ray-Bans, and have the company pay me for simply carrying on in my awesome life while wearing their sunglasses. Caption: “I have to put on my Ray-Bans to protect my eyes from that hot Hamptons sun.” That, or maybe just a relevant emoji… It could be anything, really; my followers worship the digitized ground I post pictures of myself on. I am goals, I am perfection, I am triple-heart-eyed emojis– tag your friends and family in the comments.

Did I mention my Youtube channel? I don’t have that many videos out yet, but just enough. The first video is of my significant other (a model, of course) and I skydiving out of a private jet into our private resort in Bali where we are met with fancy drinks, a custom lambo, and a puppy, just for fun. Yeah, that’s right. You thought you knew success. Ha. Screw you. This is just another Tuesday. I’ll post things on social media about “thank God it’s Friday,” but who am I kidding? My life is the perpetuation of the best of day of your life.

Then, when I finally feel like being an adult, maybe I’ll start my own online clothing company and hire myself as the model. It’ll be a cute little website where you can gradually mold yourself to look exactly like me– but you’ll never be me! I’ll start my own website and record literally every second of my life in some manner, and you can make an account and drool over my lifestyle.

This is how it begins, but then I begin to creep into every crack of the internet, into your bubbly, fake internet-based news sources, into your trusted news sources. The New York Times would like you to know how I do my makeup, and the video will go right up next to the headline regarding some humanitarian crisis happening somewhere… but which link will you click? Mine, of course. That first world vanity will get you every time; we only see what we want to see (which is also why I am having my nose done). Our America doesn’t care about the truth; it only cares what’s pretty.

A person could think “is all that spending really necessary? Couldn’t they help a brother out, somewhere?” However, a person can also be subdued so easily by all those pretty pictures– rose gold in the Jamaican sun, preserved eternally in a digital frame. A person could sigh, and continue to cling desperately to their phone as though it were a line connecting their world to that fantastic existence inside the glass.