Stuyvesant Falls Into Anarchy Over Big Fish

This may be my last message.

It has been about a week, and I am on fish 33.

Nobody knows when it started. It spread like an epidemic, and all of a sudden, it was on everyone’s phones. I personally got it from a guy from my “bad advice to pretend that your life is going swell” group chat. (Not to flex, but amongst my friend group, I am seventh place.) All of you know what I’m talking about.

Big Fish.

It’s a highly addictive Facebook Messenger game, where you force multiple fish to merge together and derive profit so you can replace them. You know the messages. “Join me, and you can earn rewards too!” “Some Asian guy with an incredibly white name just got fish number five!” Maybe, in another dimension, it could have been a little trend that died out after a week. But it didn’t. There was just something about taking care of these tiny little fish living on your cell phone that appeased the masses. For me, personally, the reason I fell in love with Big Fish was because it was the first time in many years that something had gone right for me.

Slowly but surely, the grand and honorable Big Fish found its way into everyone’s mind. Group chats for classes devolved into Big Fish mines. Suddenly, people were no longer obsessed about trying to cop a 69 on their P.E. paper. Its bright, colorful fish that definitely were not copied off of Pokémon made circles around the school. It was no longer a game. It was an obsession.

Signs of Big Fish fever were first apparent when people began flocking to Battery Park and performing pagan rituals to summon more fish. When a boy poured out the fish tank on the seventh floor in order to retrieve more fish, well, that was not the start. That was just a sign that things had gone too far.

Suddenly, the whole school was struck by Big Fish Fever. People who were once obnoxious lovers were now beating each other to death in the Hudson staircase—and not in the fun way. Some girls were attempting to stab each other by flailing around fencing swords over fish number 25. People were jumping off the roof into the rivers for more fish. God knows why students turned to violence so quickly. According to one soccer mom found cowering in her apartment trying to protect her children with a lacrosse stick, it was because the Devil himself had possessed the game. But it doesn’t matter why it happened; what matters is the effect. Every store in Tribeca had to board up their windows to escape the mobs of students trying to loot as much money as possible to buy their precious, precious fishies. Outside, I can see the local rich people with helicopters ready to evacuate the rioting neighborhood.

As of right now, I have locked myself in the swimming pool. I would like to say that it was not an intentional ploy to carve myself a little base for me to play Big Fish in peace. In reality, it’s because I don’t have any idea how doors work. It’s a real nice place. I have a big pool for the fish, a lot of space to cry in, and something that I think is food inside the equipment room. (My editor, Abdullah, is currently demanding to know where the equipment room is. No way on earth I’m telling him. That’s a sign of weakness.) But right now, I can see the mobs of students outside the doors and windows trying to break in for maybe a little more money, for a little more fish so they can move up in their rankings. So far I have held them back, but the glass can’t hold up much longer.

I’m sorry. Sorry for a lot of things, like existing or coming to this school. But most importantly, I’m sorry for not clicking on your notifications when you clicked on mine.