It was 10 o’clock on a dreary Thursday morning, and like most dreary Thursday mornings, I was curled up in an often-overlooked enclave of the Healey Library reading an often-overlooked book about dolphins and sky sex—standard procedure for the dreary and often-overlooked, such as myself. It was then out of the corner of my gloom that I caught a glimpse of a sight most fowl: A student using ChatGPT to write an essay. Cheating had officially reached a new level of laziness. So long, and thanks for all the ways to completely rob yourself of devious agency.
While cheating is unquestionably wrong, we can’t deny the fact that it happens, and with the advent of AI text-generating software, the art of cheating is at risk of being cheated out of existence worse than the time Billy Mitchell cheated at Donkey Kong. Something had to be done. I had to find a way to bring cheating back to its roots, and as if the universe heard my pleas, the answer soon presented itself in the form of three beanie-wearing, flannel-sporting cool kids—AKA: hipsters.
I had been following them for 30 minutes in the cold March drizzle, watching from a distance as they trudged listlessly down Morrissey Boulevard talking about the “purity of Polaroid pictures” and “honey, fresh from the bee’s butt.” Back in the library, I had overheard them mocking the cheater for relying on “big-tech lies” before mentioning a desire to “go retro.”
At the time, I thought I stumbled upon the portal to the glory days of cheating I so wistfully sought, but surveilling these social mavericks, I began feeling as though I had fallen into a black hole, being slowly spaghettified while being forced through a raisin-sized keyhole three billion light years-long. It was a big, fat waste of time that would have even your most professionally tedious RMV worker taking notes.
Just when I had about given up hope, the three anti-corporate stooges made it to JFK Station, where to my shock, they appeared to be meeting some kind of dubious dealer. I considered this man to be a dubious dealer not just because he wore a long, suspiciously lumpy trench coat, but because the hipsters literally referred to him as their “dubious dealer,” allowing their ironic sense of humor to shine through just enough to be quirky but not cliché.
Upon being presented with a wad of cold, hard cash, the puzzling plug opened one side of his coat to reveal pockets upon pockets of secret inventory. The sight that greeted me was beautiful. Years-old English papers, algebra exam answer sheets, completed history homework; the man had it all. It was sketchy. It was expensive. It was impractical. It was surely outdated and for good reason. It was retro-cheating at its finest; schoolhouse infidelity the way mom and pop used to do it.
I had to get in on this, but needed a way to disguise myself to not startle the hipsters into thinking I was mainstream. However, catching sight of my own blurry reflection in a nearby puddle, I realized my beanie-wearing, flannel-sporting ass already skirted comfortably on the outskirts of what they considered societal fashion norms. Noticing the poorly drawn smiley face logo on one of their shirts, I had my opening.
“Yo, fellas! Nirvana, am I right? Good band. I’ve got a copy of Nevermind…on vinyl, of course! I buy exclusively vinyl. Now, how can one acquire a slice of this retro-cheating pancake?”
The trio and their dealer appeared annoyed by my sudden appearance. Taking a step forward, the leader of the bunch took a tone similar to a bad cop in an interrogation room.
“First of all, it’s not called ‘retro-cheating’ or ‘alternative-cheating’ or ‘indie-cheating.’ These are terms that have already been appropriated and commercialized by mainstream culture…not that I care about labels. If I had to put a label on it, though, I would call it ‘real.’”
His lackeys nodded in smug agreement before their boss hit me with the big question. “Secondly, if you’re such a big Nirvana fan, name all of their studio albums.”
Given the fact that there were only three, this was an easy task, but after responding, “Bleach,” “Nevermind” and “In Utero,” the head honcho of hip cackled, “You forgot ‘Incesticide!’”
It was then that I realized their pretension was performative, and they had no idea what they were talking about. Sadly for me, choosing to inform them that “Incesticide” was actually a compilation album and not considered a full studio LP was enough to signal that I wasn’t one of them.
“Anyone can cheat by memorizing Wikipedia,” claimed the butthurt man. “And before you say it, I’m not a hypocrite like you establishment drones! It’s not like we buy these papers to cheat, we just hang them on our walls for the aesthetic. It’s something YOU wouldn’t understand!”
With that revelation, the gang decided they had enough, and along with their dubious dealer, hopped on the next train to Bunko Town. I guess if a normie like me is retro-cheating, it just isn’t cool anymore. And if something isn’t cool, is it really worth doing at all? Of course, it isn’t. If there’s one thing I’ve learned on this quest, it’s that if something was cool, nobody would be doing it, and you’re not going to hear that kind of terrible, toxic advice from ChatGPT.