Humanity, that tragic parade of procrastinators and Red Bull addicts, was always going to end like this: not with a bang, but with a biological group text. It’s the end-times, but with extra steps – and it’s upholstered in the polyester seats of a forgotten college lecture hall. Gather around and behold Pluribus, a show documenting the last spectacle of free will: obliterated in an invisible GroupMe engineered by ACME Corp, in conjunction with the unknowable, eldritch horrors of a planet whose Yelp reviews you don’t want to read. It all began—because how else would it begin—with a cosmic phone call, courtesy of interstellar RNA spam. Earth, as ever, declined to ask “who dis?” and clicked the link, infecting our species with a firmware update straight from Uranus Beta or wherever. The virus? A hive-minder. Suddenly, everyone is sharing the same thought process, which, based on human history, can only mean doom—or a group project, which is basically the same. Cut to: 13 survivors. Not just any 13, oh no, but a grab bag of immune randos including Carol, whose main claim to fame is refusing to write another vampire erotica chapter until someone explains the WiFi password. Each day, Carol wakes up and says, “No, I will NOT mindmeld.” Honestly? Mood. Now, the Pluribus Ensemble operates on aoogah radio frequencies, bodyhacking themselves into sentient walkie-talkies. Before, we needed Apple Watch updates. Now, we ARE the update. Remember radios? No? Well, imagine Twitter but everyone is shrieking in your own personal inner monologue 24/7, and you can’t mute. Great, you’re with me. Physics, supposedly real, tells us that a radio requires oscillating electrons. Guess what? Turns out viral hive minds can jerry-rig the human nervous system into a chain-smoking Tesla coil, turning Karen from next door into a walking NPR pledge drive. The result? Neural AirDrop for every intrusive thought. Think “I want nachos,” and suddenly 8 billion souls are craving Doritos Locos Tacos. Civilization collapses under synchronized snack runs. Let’s overanalyze. How powerful is a hive brain? Answer: too powerful. Imagine if every hot take on the internet was instantly consensus. There’s no more arguing about pineapple on pizza. The pizza itself has already voted and left the building. It’s the death of small talk, and extroverts finally know despair. The upside? You’ll never forget an anniversary, a name, or a Spotify password again; the downside? No one knows who they are anymore. Pluribus hands you the existential void of a philosophy minor halfway through a bong rip. Sure, information is free, but so is the sensation of staring into your own mental abyss while everyone else is there too, watching, judgment baked in. Science would probably have a real answer—wavelengths, mesh networks, cortisol levels—but let’s be honest, nothing explains the cosmic horror of unanimous taste in TikTok dances. This isn’t ESP. It’s ESPN: the Extremely Shared Paranoia Network. In the end, if you want to resist becoming one with the Great Google Sheet in the Sky, join Carol: barricade yourself behind stacks of Nicholas Sparks paperbacks, blast static on the last FM radio you can find, and shout into the void. But make it quick—because the void is about to shout back.