“Have you caught any of the latest virals?”
“I got the flu shot.”
“What?”
“I don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I was asking you a question.”
“Which was what?”
“Viral videos!”
“What about them?”
“Have you seen any of the latest?”
“How would I know which ones are the latest?”
“They’re viral!”
“So what?”
“If you’ve seen one recently, it’s the latest.”
“Haven’t seen ’em. In fact, anything marked or tagged or branded as viral I go out of my way not to see.”
“You’re missing out.”
“On what?”
“All the viral videos!”
“Schlock.”
“It’s not. OK, yes, maybe some of it. But not all of it! Don’t roll your eyes at me. There was a really good one of this guy in Australia or New Zealand. Or, it’s New South Wales, is that—”
“Australia.”
“Yes, OK, I guess it is. Anyway, this guy was surfing and you’re like, ‘OK, it’s a surfing video, whatever, seen that before.’ But then—like ghosts emerging out of a mist it’s this pod of dolphins creeping out of, or into, the wave and they’re all dolphin swimming, with their tails going, riding the wave alongside this guy.”
“Dolphins.”
“Yeah, a pod of them.”
“They weren’t porpoises?”
“I don’t know, they could have been.”
“Could’ve been?”
“What do you care what they were? That part’s not important.”
“They were porpoises.”
“You saw it!”
“Saw what?”
“The dolphin video. Or, porpoises, the porpoises surfing with the guy in Australia, you saw it!”
“I like dolphins, and porpoises. Yeah, I saw it.”
“Oh my God!”
“It looked like a scene from Point Break.”
“Oh, you always loved that movie.”
“I did. I do. Surfing, Swayze, Keanu, bank robbery? I mean—that was viral before viral was even viral.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“What?”
“You’re watching viral videos now.”
“I’m not. No, this was—”
“Can, can I…?”
“What?”
“Can I, what if I took a video of you watching a viral video?”
“Do you think people would like that?”
The Writing of John B. Randall 