Smartr ep. 2 - AutoNews
This is the script of the second episode of Smartr, a scripted comedy podcast I co-created and co-wrote with Matt Klinman and Sam West. The show is about a billionaire venture capitalist in Silicon Valley visiting promising tech companies and deciding whether or not to invest in them. It was released on Luminary in 2019. I pitched this episode idea and was primarily responsible for this script.
INT: NOA’S OFFICE
NOA VO
If your taste in journalism tends towards the salacious and poorly sourced, you probably heard some wild stories about me recently.
SFX: We hear a FLURRY OF OVERLAPPING TV NEWS HEADLINES read by different anchors.
NEWS ANCHOR 1
Could the next hot tech gadget be you dying?
NEWS ANCHOR 3
Tech billionaire Noa Lukas wants you DEAD!
NEWS ANCHOR 2
one tech billionaire has a SECRET PLAN to own your soul for all eternity
NOA VO
(sigh) I am, of course, not planning on killing anybody. But let me give you a lesson in how so-called “journalism” seems to work these days. A few weeks ago, I got a call from a blogger.
(RECORDED PHONE CONVERSATION)
BLOGGER BETH OCCONO
Hi, Beth Occono with The Verge.
BLOGGER BETH OCCONO
I have two sources saying you’re planning a digital afterlife. Is it true that people will not have the option of retaining ownership of their own souls?
NOA
No, users are free to terminate our license at any time simply by deactivating their consciousness.
NOA VO
The audacity of this person - I haven’t even announced the project yet. But the cat’s out of the bag, so I’ll let you podcast listeners in on a major exclusive.
MUSIC: Ethereal Vaporwave
NOA VO
My wife Bronte and I are building a digital Heaven. This isn’t just a video game: Your consciousness will actually be uploaded into an afterlife engineered by me, with angelic polygon art designed by my wife, the preeminent hologram artist working today. I’ll tell you more later, and trust me, it is epic. But I wondered how this stranger got the story… and then got it so wrong.
NOA VO
Consumers need news, but instead they get biased, dishonest screeds delivered as fast as some unpaid intern can type.
MUSIC: Inspirational cue
NOA VO
But imagine news backed by data muscle so it knows what you’re interested in. News with no bias, because YOU decide what’s true. Good news: it’s here, thanks to a company called AutoNews. It’s exactly what it sounds like: news that’s created automatically, by extremely intelligent machines.
Following lines alternate, panning left and right.
AUTHORITATIVE NEWS VOICE
Strong Week For Gaza IPO Hints At Charges For Apparent T. Rex Skeleton.
Cruise Ship Crashes Into Russian Hacking Firm Indictment Handed Down.
Mansion Sold By Airlines Boss For Bones Co-Stars Shatters On Impact.
NOA VO
These stories weren't being reported by CNN, the Washington Post, or any human at all. They were some of the most-read headlines on social from that day, and AutoNews was the only outlet reporting them. My CFO-slash-personal assistant Elena was reading them off as we drove to the AutoNews office.
INT. NOA’S CAR
ELENA
(reading)
Reagan Declares Twitter Obstruction To Celeb Couples Who Renewed Vows.
NOA
That doesn't sound right. Reagan is dead, isn't he? Or sick.
ELENA
He's dead. Here's another one: Bitcoin iPhone Gunned Down In Chicago Housing Beach.
NOA
Hmm, that's tragic. Somebody shot an iPhone with a bitcoin on it somewhere in Chicago, I’m presuming?
ELENA
Chicago Housing Beach, it says.
NOA
That city is a hellhole. And I hate that stupid mirror bean...
NOA VO
The product was remarkable: a wellspring of infinite news. And AutoNews has become profitable where traditional publishers continue to fail. How was it possible? Was it as good as it seemed? Would I invest?
INT. AUTONEWS HQ
JARED MARKS
Obviously I’d known for a long time there were serious ethical problems in gaming journalism. But I didn’t realize the rot extended into the mainstream media until it happened to me.
NOA VO
That's Jared Marks, AutoNews's 28-year-old founder. He's got the disheveled, bags-under-the-eyes look of the programmer fresh off an all-nighter. Jared's journey to founding AutoNews started, appropriately enough, with a headline, in the San Jose Mercury News.
JARED MARKS
I think the impetus was really when I was accused of being a sex pest.
SFX: TV news music
NETWORK NEWS ANCHOR
The founder of the Silicon Valley start-up “Living Space” has been kicked out of his own company after multiple women came forward with allegations of sexual harassment, (fading out) and anti-Semitism.
JARED MARKS
The IPO would have made me 900 million dollars, but I was fired the day before. All because of some article that was just a vicious attack designed to harm me personally.
NOA
Was it true?
JARED MARKS
Yeah, sure, but was it 900 million dollars true? Of course not. I barely slept for months trying to think of ways to destroy the people who thought they'd destroyed me. AutoNews is the result of that obsession.
NOA VO
When Jared brought me to the newsroom, I expected blaring TVs and shut-ins clacking at typewriters, while sweaty, cigar-chomping editors worked the phones, promising favorable coverage for advertisers. But AutoNews just had a few vaping programmers working quietly in an open office space.
JARED MARKS
This is the whole company, basically.
NOA
That is impressive. How does AutoNews work with just a few human employees?
[Music cue: bubbling energetic electronic thing that suggests industriousness]
JARED MARKS
It starts with every news headline ever written.
NOA VO
The backbone of AutoNews is its proprietary recursive neural network text prediction algorithm. It combs through a database filled with centuries of headlines, from the earliest broadsheet to the clickiest listicle.
JARED MARKS
It picks a word based on how often it appears in the database -- let's say, "Nevada." Then, it picks the next word based on how often it appears after Nevada -- that gets us "Nevada Woman." We follow that chain to the end, which gives us this headline that just popped up, "Nevada Woman Takes Lyme Disease From Flourishing Fetus Is Kicked Off Airplane."
NOA
So you’re auto-generating all this content-- how do you get it in front of people?
JARED MARKS
We buy popular meme accounts, stuff like Drunk Girl Fails or Aryan Makeup Tutorials. Then we change the account names to something credible-sounding like Hartford Eagle or New York Journal. The algorithm posts our headlines from those accounts, and when one gets traction, it automatically spreads it to more readers through sponsored posts and bots.
NOA
And what happens when one of those accounts gets shut down or suspended?
JARED MARKS
We use a "Medusa Algorithm" so whenever one of our accounts is banned, three more similar ones take its place.
NOA
So when one of those accounts disappear, it doesn’t even matter, because they’re all the same.
JARED MARKS
That was our original thought, but we’ve found even more success sorting headlines into conservative and liberal "buckets" and posting them to fake publications that pretend to serve those audiences.
NOA VO
AutoNews learned to predict which words and phrases were overrepresented in conservative headlines -- mosque, fetus, uranium — and what was overrepresented in liberal headlines -- Genderqueer, nondairy, water birth. Engagement skyrocketed.
ELENA
So you're microtargeting to whip up partisan anger?
JARED MARKS
Readers are much more likely to believe something they feel they have to believe to maintain social standing within their race or political tribe. So take this headline, "Lawyer For Trump Commits Drunk Suicide Outside With 'Parks And Rec' Cast." It did nothing on a neutral site. Then we posted it on an account called Intersectional Beacon with a profile pic of a hot girl wearing a beanie. Massive hit.
NOA VO
Unlike traditional news organizations, whose expensive fact checkers perform little better than chance, AutoNews has a totally democratic verification process. When a headline is obviously false or not coherent --
AUTHORITATIVE NEWS VOICE
To Kaiser When Visits Partridge Israel Horserace As Roosevelt Fondles.
NOA VO
-- It’ll generate far less engagement and quickly disappear from people's feeds -- no harm done. But a plausible headline like this one--
AUTHORITATIVE NEWS VOICE
The Trump To Hash Out Differences With Kaiser Before Jobs Report.
NOA VO
-- will be shared, and the algorithm will see that and help it along. And when you share an AutoNews headline, you’re teaching the algorithm that it’s true, so it’s more likely to use those words in the future.
NOA
And are you writing entire articles based on these headlines?
JARED MARKS
Almost nobody actually clicks through a headline to the story except diligent bots. So we monetize by creating a landing page that’s just the headline on top of an infinite scroll of ads that bots find appealing.
ELENA
So your tech can generate content and traffic. But I feel like we have to ask, are any of these headlines true?
JARED MARKS
Early on, I realized it was in my financial interest to believe everything AutoNews generates, so I do. If you believe AutoNews, then everything gets easier, because fighting against it is a losing battle. That's what the sharing newsroom is all about. The marketplace decides what news is true.
NOA
People understand what’s going on around them, Elena. To say they don’t is the elitist arrogance of a newspaper reporter.
JARED MARKS
Different people want different things out of their news. Some people want news that’s accurate. But most people want news that’s dynamic and entertaining and reinforces their beliefs. That’s AutoNews’s market. Once enough people think something is true, they start acting like it is, and at a certain point, that’s all that matters. They believe it into existence.
NOA VO
Jared was right. The old model says that truth should be based on observable phenomena, described accurately. But the old model is unprofitable. Maybe that means...we should do the opposite of that.
NOA
I'm glad you have confidence in what you're doing but I want you to prove that your technology works. Why don't you show me what AutoNews has written about me?
JARED MARKS
Absolutely. Let me bring up something right now.
SFX: We hear Jared typing.
AUTHORITATIVE NEWS VOICE
Tech Mogul Lukas Plans For New Billions Of Perfect Night Spending.
NOA
Hmmm. Night Spending is definitely an interesting-sounding field. That headline is plausible.
NOA VO
This was news the way it was meant to be. Within seconds, millions would hear about my Night Spending. Jared’s powerful vision of a news future was breaking down walls. But whether or not I invested in his company depended on how far he was willing to go to overturn the gatekeepers.
INTERLUDE 1
INT. NOA’S CONFERENCE ROOM
NOA VO
Although I was disappointed that our rollout was preempted by the blogs, creating digital Heaven with my wife was becoming an all-consuming obsession. It was born of the very first conversation we ever had at the Westworld Season 2 premiere pre-party. In a way, our courtship and marriage have just been that conversation continuing and growing in ever more stimulating ways.
BRONTE
what I’ve been imagining is when you walk into heaven you walk through the central gates and you see the central fountain. I’m calling it the Everlasting Fountain, as a nod to eternity, and it’ll shoot lasers of unknown colors, as a nod to lasers.
NOA
Unseen colors is good. Woz, you can write a script to generate colors that have never been seen?
BRONTE
I can come up with some names for the new colors. Like Dilko, or Pigshit!
WOZ
This color stuff is really good I just want to make sure I get it it right. So the idea is, what again?
NOA
I don’t have time. If you didn’t pay attention the first time, listen to the podcast later.
NOA VO
I should introduce Tom Joyce. I call him Woz because I’m like Steve Jobs, and he does everything I say. We’ve worked together for decades, and while he’s a bit of an embarrassing man-child, he is inexhaustible and seems to have no interests outside of programming.
SFX: Whiteboard writing
BRONTE
Woz, I’d like to make it so that objects fall at different rates depending on the happiness of the person dropping the object.
WOZ
So… variable physics for everyone... depending on their emotion?
NOA
Woz, this is Heaven. Not some new Quake game. This is important.
WOZ
It’s just, I guess we’re talking about designing a whole new physics engine, one more complex than any currently existing in reality…
BRONTE
Well it doesn’t have to be for everyone if that’s an issue. But it should at least happen for the bug-men.
NOA
Right, I -- Wait, what bug men?
BRONTE
Oh, well they’re not ready yet, but I’ve just been working on some really fascinating designs. Sort of an inversion of corporeal decay, where WE become the bugs? But also the bugs exist outside us.
NOA
Huh, I mean, I can’t say I thought heaven would be filled with weird bug men, but maybe when I see it it’ll make more sense?
BRONTE
Totally, these are really going to blow you away.
NOA
Have you finished the uploading interface, Woz?
WOZ
Well I didn’t realize I was supposed to be doing that part, and that technology doesn’t exist yet... Is there someone else who can take a crack at it?
NOA
I’d do it, but I’m too busy making the money we need to get this project off the ground. Just do all these things at the same time, it’ll go faster.
NOA VO
Heaven was coming together quickly, and the next step was to see Bronte’s designs for the first time. I couldn’t wait, but first, AutoNews still needed my help, and I needed to decide if I was going to invest.
ACT II
INT. JARED'S OFFICE
SFX: Air conditioner, A loud computer console (like a huge tricked-out gaming PC with a big fan)
JARED MARKS
Most of those clothes are filthy, so you can just sit on them instead of moving them out of the way.
NOA VO
Jared brought me into his office. It was a classic programmer's den -- windows blocked with stained bedsheets, the room illuminated by a couple computer screens, one filled with lines of code, the other with photos of gore from an outre image board, a plate covered in dried sauce and heaps of unwashed clothes all around.
ELENA
Is that an SS flag?
JARED MARKS
Yeah, I hung it in here because it’s hilarious how angry it makes people. Like three people have quit because of it.
NOA
It’s kitsch, Elena. Do you not get it?
ELENA
(disgusted)
Noa, are there some calls you need me to make out in the hall?
NOA
No, just sit on those sweatshirts.
NOA VO
Jared and the AutoNews team were changing the way we got our news online, and the big boys felt threatened. The first shot was fired by Facebook, who accused AutoNews of spamming the platform with millions of headlines each minute.
JARED MARKS
But that was our business model. What they were telling us was that our company didn't have the right to exist, which is the REAL definition of fascism.
NOA VO
Jared took the fight to the airwaves. With the help of credulous conservative politicians and media figures, Jared claimed that Facebook was banning them as part of an elite liberal media conspiracy run by censorious social justice warriors.
NOA
And Zuckerberg’s no fool, he sees the writing on the wall.
JARED MARKS
He’s been through this before, so he knew the playbook. He capitulated immediately.
And he visited AutoNews headquarters to apologize in person.
JARED MARKS
We actually brought him out into the main office and had everyone come in and he bowed at the waist and he said he was sorry and hoped that Facebook and AutoNews would be partners moving forward.
NOA
That must have given the whole team a lift.
JARED MARKS
It was very validating when Zuckerberg bowed to me. It proved that as powerful as Facebook is, we could outmaneuver them with our constant bad faith attacks.
ELENA
What about Twitter?
JARED MARKS
twitter is already doing enough to de-legitimize reporters...
NOA
So if you've already conquered the platforms, then what exactly is your problem?
JARED MARKS
Our REAL problem is dealing with Satan's Mother.
[Thoughtful music cue]
NOA VO
I wasn't sure what Jared was talking about. But Jared told me that Satan's Mother was born right there inside AutoNews's algorithm.
JARED MARKS
We had this headline, last year. I can recite it from memory, Baby Royal Leads Search For Survivors After Satan Mother Eliminates Two Hundred. As soon as that headline got posted, it absolutely took off.
NOA
Why did that headline strike a chord with people?
JARED MARKS
We didn’t really understand why. You never know what’s going to perform well. People were trying to figure out what does "Satan Mother" mean, who was eliminated -- and obviously anything with a royal baby does great numbers.
ELENA
So it was just that one headline?
JARED MARKS
When the headline went viral, the algorithm created a feedback loop where Satan Mother kept reappearing. And people kept upvoting them.
AUTHORITATIVE NEWS VOICE
Satan's Mother Hunkers Down For Summer Fun At Beach Water Birth.
Bernie Shares Caliphate Crust With Satan Mother Despite Intense Wind.
Pedophile Army To March On Satan's Mother For Avocado White House.
NOA VO
Before long there was a Satan's Mother subreddit with a thriving community of amateur investigators working together.
JARED MARKS
Basically, we believe that Satan's Mother is in the United States, and is preparing to give birth to Satan. Once that happens, Satan will gather his forces to kill Trump, but an army of pedophiles will rise up to defend him.
NOA
The pedophiles are bad...
JARED MARKS
No, Satan’s bad, the pedophiles are good.
Obviously the algorithm is leading us somewhere. People are making memes to connect the clues, self publishing books. It's a powerful movement, and I’m trying to lead it.
NOA
You’re trying to lead it?
SFX: HUGE chanting crowd.
PROTESTORS
Love will smother! Satan’s Mother! Love will smother! Satan’s Mother!
NOA VO
In just a few short weeks, the Satan’s Mother Defense Force, as they called themselves, had stepped out into the light. Hundreds marched in rallies across the country to support pedophiles.
JARED MARKS
We’ve got people handing out flyers at playgrounds that say “Pedophiles Are Not The Enemy.” All because of AutoNews. It’s hilarious and inspiring.
NOA
I can see that Satan’s Mother is driving your growth. But before I’m comfortable supporting you, I need to know if you believe this shit.
JARED MARKS
The important thing is that my audience believes it, and they’ll lose their jobs and alienate their families to prove it. I feel an obligation to keep it going to validate their life choices, and for the lulz.
NOA
Listen. You started Autonews to destroy the media as we know it. You can push to a new level of growth by buying up a few established media properties for pennies: Gannett, Mother Jones, Buzzfeed... Once they put out your headlines, they’re legitimized, and no journalist will criticize you, because they're too clannish and insecure to question even the most dishonest of their colleagues, out of fear that one day they'll need to beg them for a job.
JARED MARKS
But I don't need credibility. Once someone learns about Satan’s Mother, they get sucked in and never leave, and we haven’t even mobilized them yet. We’re eliminating the elite m edia and Satan’s Mother will replace them!
NOA
You’re not there yet. You’ve created an alternate media, when your goal should be becoming the only media. Think of an AutoNews White House correspondent, asking algorithmically generated questions to the President.
JARED MARKS
I mean-- if media companies are as cheap as you say, I guess I’ll try. I just hope this doesn't slow down Satan's Mother.
NOA VO
The AutoNews model of instant, free misinformation had the potential to drag his obsolete competitors into an endless spiral of cost-cutting and standards-lowering that they'd never be able to escape. Jared had an incredible opportunity, but it was up to him to follow through.
INTERLUDE 2
INT. NOA’S SKYSCRAPER
NOA VO
I couldn’t wait to meet up with Bronte. She was driving in from the desert with some new designs for Heaven.
BRONTE
I wanted to establish a dichotomy. Life and death. Heaven and earth. Decay and rebirth. All packaged inside one creature I call King Bug.
NOA
OK, and this is king bug?
BRONTE
Yes
NOA
And this is like a crown?
BRONTE
Well he’s a king
NOA VO
Bronte’s designs were not what I was expecting. Lots of armor, and antennae, and way more tubes than I ever associated with heaven or angels.
NOA
They’re just not exactly what comes to mind when I think of heaven. Specifically, a lot of the weird bug parts, and this here, the leathery egg sac? I don’t know if that reads as “Heaven.” I was thinking more, y’know, candy. Or, like harps, and beanstalks maybe? I don’t know, you’re the creative. Whatever you want, but not this.
BRONTE
Well, we want to give people something they haven’t seen before, right?
NOA
That’s all well and good for an art exhibit, but I’m not sure I’ve adequately explained what’s going on to you. People are going to plug their immortal consciousnesses into this machine and --
BRONTE
I know. It’s exactly like that Black Mirror episode.
NOA
I don’t think one TV show episode will matter once we actually deliver an eternity in Heaven. NASA didn’t watch Star Trek and say “now we can’t go to the moon unless we strap some weird bug parts to the rocket so it looks original.”
BRONTE
Ok, you don't like the bugs. I'm hearing that loud and clear. Did you like the shrimp at least?
NOA
The shrimp is delightful. Go more in that shrimp direction. I’m responding less to the things that are grotesque. And why do they all have staffs with orbs on them? We have to lose those.
BRONTE
Look, I want your notes, but we agreed that you were providing the technical infrastructure for this project and I would be allowed to have creative control over the design.
NOA
This all falls under the purview of technical infrastructure. If everything in Heaven has an reflective orb, we have to render each orb individually and that is a huge drain on our graphics engine. Unless there’s no ray tracing in heaven! I mean, keep it in, it’ll just about murder Woz...
BRONTE
Ok, noted, I can get rid of the “ray tracing.” Are you going to show me what you’ve been working on?
NOA
The backend mostly… Well Woz has. Mostly the physics for the rocks. We were having some problems where rocks were suddenly flying into the air and obliterating the sun. I could show you some rocks sitting on the ground if you’d like, but I don’t know if it would be all that helpful.
BRONTE
No, we can table the rocks for now. I’ll do another pass on the designs. I just want this to be good and it’s new collaborating with a business person like you.
NOA
Oh come on. I’m not a business person.
NOA VO
I was smoothing out heaven, but it was time to see how Jared had smoothed out AutoNews. I'd given him everything he needed to turn it into a media juggernaut.
ACT III
INT. CONFERENCE ROOM
NOA VO
I sat down with Elena to talk through whether AutoNews was worthy of an investment.
NOA
. Bringing the media to heel has long been a goal of mine. But I worry Jared will squander a golden opportunity.
ELENA
I worry he's an insane Nazi. He's a talented engineer I guess but there's a reason he's already been thrown out of three companies.
NOA
You said it yourself, he's a talented engineer. I'm an empiricist and a stoic, and I don't like the idea that our products are to be judged by our beliefs, rather than the other way around. From there it's a slippery slope to saying people shouldn't accept money from me because I once wrote an essay justifying slavery.
ELENA
People do say that.
NOA
All I was saying was if we’d never banned slaves AI would have outcompeted them by now. I was complimenting AI, not putting down slaves!
SFX: Phone call
NOA
Jared!, Have you made any acquisitions yet?
JARED MARKS
Is that really what you want to talk about? Yes. I bought Vox, Bustle Digital Group, the Boston Globe (fade out as he continues listing media properties) --
NOA VO
I was pleasantly surprised that Jared had bought a number of media companies and immediately got to work laying off their journalists. But he found that getting rid of people was difficult to scale.
JARED MARKS
Even if we were able to quickly identify several hundred people we wanted to lay off, say by sorting a spreadsheet by salary and just selecting the highest two hundred cells, actually sitting them down and laying them off would still take days.
NOA
Yeah you are preaching to the choir here man, I used to love laying people off but it’s become a chore.
JARED MARKS
And plus, these are all journalists, so once one of them gets laid off, they go on Twitter to grandstand about it, and that's damaging the brands we're acquiring.
NOA VO
Still a programmer at heart, Jared got to work on a piece of software that would help him streamline the process of laying people off.
MUSIC CUE: ‘good idea happening’
JARED MARKS
I called it Lockout. It leverages work histories and performance reviews to find specious reasons to fire staffers for cause. And it transitions others to freelance work and then never contacts them again, so no one’s ever aware of what's going on and they're too afraid to tweet anything about it, because they think they still might work there.
NOA VO
Jared was describing a potentially game-changing development in downsizing. The days of hiring expensive layoff consultants could be over. Lockout even provided intentionally laggy teleconferences, so employees being laid off wouldn't be able to respond or ask questions. But he had more to tell me, and he said he could only do it in person, at the National Zoo in Washington, DC. So we got on a jet.
SFX: A jet taking off.
EXT. ZOO
SFX: protestors; police helicopter; wind; a few animal sounds; security guards telling people to step back
ZOO PROTESTORS
(People screaming at each other.— stuff about Satan and Mueller.)
NOA VO
When we arrived at the zoo, it wasn’t the joyland of fun and confined animals I remembered from my childhood. A protest was raging, pitting two screaming groups against each other.
NOA
What is all this about?
ELENA
I can’t tell. Everyone seems very angry and a lot of them have long guns. We’re supposed to meet Jared behind the Reptile Discovery Center but I don’t think we can get any closer.
NOA VO
Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Jared, wearing a zookeeperr ’s uniform. Without a word, he ushered us into a service entrance of the reptile house.
INT. REPTILE HOUSE
SFX: another door opens. We hear the sounds of an animal habitat - trickling water, a humidifier’s hiss
JARED MARKS
I want to show you something…
NOA
What, this lizard?
JARED MARKS
This is Satan’s Mother. We found her!
NOA
Ugh.
JARED MARKS
I get it, it sounded crazy to me too. But once you spend enough time looking at the evidence on the subreddit, there are too many connections for them all to be coincidences.
ELENA
What does that have to do with bothering this lizard?
JARED MARKS
We saw this headline from the New Hampshire Explorer, "Fat Washington Lizard Threatened By Pedophiles At Satan’s Mother Reunion." From there, we were mostly just looking fat lizards reuniting in the Washington area.
NOA
So that’s why all those protesters are out there screaming? They want to kill the lizard because they think it’s Satan’s Mother?
JARED MARKS
Half of them want to kill the lizard. The other half want it to cough up the unredacted Mueller report.
ELENA
What?
NOA VO
It seems that while AutoNews was publishing headlines about the importance of killing this lizard through their conservative channels, liberal readers were sharing lizard-based headlines, with a different slant.
AUTHORITATIVE NEWS VOICE
Attorney General Barr Agrees To Release Mueller Report At Key Lizard Brunch
JARED MARKS
So they all think Bill Barr was visiting the lizard, and the only copy of the unredacted Mueller Report fell out of his coat into the enclosure, and the lizard ate it.
ELENA
Is the lizard large enough to eat the report?
JARED MARKS
They think it was rolled up tight with a rubber band.
NOA
Hmm, It is a long lizard… Can’t William Barr just clear this all up?
JARED MARKS
Once Trump tweeted out his support for the pedophiles trying to kill Satan’s Mother, Barr has been reluctant to say anything.
INT. PRESS CONFERENCE - NEWS CLIP
FAKE NEWS REPORTER
Mr. Barr, what are you doing to kill Satan’s Mother?
REAL BARR
I will not be answering questions about that at this time.
NOA VO
After the lizard had been identified, both sides began camping out at the zoo, which had to close the exhibit.
JARED MARKS
We were trying to climb into the enclosure to shoot the lizard or stomp on it, and then these idiot liberals would be trying to pry its mouth open and trigger its gag reflex. Eventually they just locked us all out, but I found a zookeeper who’s sympathetic to the cause --
NOA
Jared, stop. I've made my decision. I won't get involved with AutoNews. You might still revolutionize media, but it won't happen until the Satan's Mother investigation is over.
JARED MARKS
I agree. Once we crucify the lizard--
NOA
Enough. I’d like to purchase the Lockout platform from you and then get out of this horrible
reptile house.
JARED MARKS
That's fantastic. Then I can pour the money back into the Satan's Mother community so we can fund a pedophile militia to defend God, who is Trump.
NOA
Whatever. We'll work out the terms—
There is shouting and pounding on the other side of the Reptile House door.
NOA VO
The crowd outside could no longer be held back. They were beating on the doors,
JARED MARKS
Shit, they’re onto us. I have to do this now. With my bare hands.
ELENA
Wait a minute, you’re not actually going to kill the lizard, are you?
NOA
What happens to AutoNews when Satan’s Mother is dead and no one’s sharing headlines about it anymore?
JARED MARKS
Don’t be a shill Noa, I thought you were more based than that. This is bigger than AutoNews. This used to be a game to me, but once I stopped sleeping and really dedicated myself to believing it was true, it all started to make sense! I was put on this earth to lead a movement dedicated to killing this lizard.
NOA VO
Elena and I headed out the back as the crowd moved in on him. Autonews could have brought the media to its knees, but Jared had been lost to shitposting - irony poisoned into irrelevance.
SFX: The Reptile House doors burst open. We hear a RIOT and gunshots going off.
ZOO PROTESTORS
Assorted angry protestors going after each other.
NOA VO
The zoo broke out into open warfare between pro- and anti-lizard forces. Four lizards were killed that afternoon, but “Satan’s Mother” had escaped unharmed, beneath a big log. Jared ended up in handcuffs but that seemed to endear him to his followers even more. The man has a future but it’s not one I want any part of. Like Julian Assange, internet freaks like Jared are useful until they aren’t and then should be shunned or allowed to die.
SFX: Jet taking off.
MUSIC: Conclusion
OUTRO
NOA VO
Sometimes, the opportunity you're looking for isn't the one that finds you. I'd wanted to punish the media for publicizing Heaven, but instead, Lockout found me, and quickly became one of the most profitable properties in my portfolio. And not only that, my press has improved.
AUTHORITATIVE NEWS VOICE
New Tiger Acquisition Brings Lukas New Renown As Boyz II Men Killed In Coal Outbreak.
NOA VO
The best PR I didn't even have to buy.