by Gwynneth Gesth An excerpt from our latest issue, The Fake News Issue!
Fascist tyrant of the streets,
I write to you today on behalf of my grandson, Ross Gesth. I write to you today, in this very public, real, and good newspaper, to deliver to you the news that you are finished. Ruined. My home doesn’t get internet, so I write to you now, you technological Pol Pot, from the local public library. I come here twice a week to keep up with the other world, that one Online, and I’ve gleaned from Facebook and Wordpress and Ticker and Zomit that you have made an enemy of youths around this nation. Big mistake, Uber. Big mistake…you neo-Nazi.
My grandson writes of you often, Uber. He makes “statuses” online about the way you lure vulnerable youngsters into serving a rigid totalitarian state, and on www.RossGoesOff.wordpress.com he even outlines a plan to sabotage you with pranks, hijinks, and more serious ideas as well. You want to use an army of cyber-youths to take down the media in order to further serve the oppressive regime you’ve help put in place? So be it. My daughter’s son Ross will erase your website from his phone, and then he will become a full-time taxi driver. My handsome and righteous grandson will combat you in the very streets you terrorize.
I offer to you, through this good publication, an offer: Leave the young people of this country alone, cease your nationalistic rhetoric and your Constitutional injustices and, if you truly want to allay the gripes that Ross has alluded to on various online playgrounds and real-world playgrounds as well, stop employing drivers who take it upon themselves to decide what music is played. That’s indoctrination, and if it does not end I will be forced to take matters into my own grandson Ross’s hands.
Also, “surge pricing.” I’m not sure what that is, but Ross says on Twitter.com that it is “wack,” “so fucked,” and even notes them as an example of “some serious Nazi-level shit. Big, big bullshit.” Your fascist coup of LaGuardia airport hasn’t escaped us Uber. The eyes of the world are watching. Sickening.
To Ross you are a new enemy. Your betrayal – your empty promises of a fairer, better world, where no middle-aged man is denied the opportunity to make a little extra cash on the side – stung him hard, like the first round thwap of a switch from a time when parents had God’s blessing to do what was necessary. I remember that time. And I remember you, Uber. You’re nothing new to me. No. We knew you by many names: Stalin. Mussolini. Mao Zedong. We should have seen you coming, but how could we? You slithered in like all the others, cloaked in technology, innovation, and “progressivism.” You rose up on the back of the little guy, but you didn’t even realize that that little guy was my grandson Ross, who is 6’4”.