In the darkness of his bedroom, Brandon Knight furtively scrolled through her pictures on Facebook. Stopping on each one, he scanned the screen carefully, his eye stopping wherever a bit of exposed flesh, however small, was visible. On occasion, he got a tantalizing view of cleavage, or even better, a full shot of her seemingly-infinite legs.
He recalled with pride the moment when he finally grew a big enough pair to send her a friend request. The hidden pictures, meant for “friends-only” eyes, were so much better than the publicly-available shots of her. He smiled to himself.
Going to click the “next” button, eagerly anticipating what dazzling display of beauty lay beyond, his thumb inadvertently grazed the trackpad of his laptop. Before he could register the error, he then clicked the mouse button. Normally this would not be a problem, but the cursor had ended up hovering over the worst possible spot on the screen: the “like” button.
Immediately, Facebook cheerfully notified him that the picture had been successfully “liked”. The picture of Bucks cheerleader Kaytee. The picture of Kaytee in a bikini.
Brandon’s vision blurred, his limbs weakened, as the consequences of his misclick dawned on him. He barely knew Kaytee. He had been pleasantly surprised when she had accepted his friend request. And now, she would know that he was some kind of perverted stalker, fulfilling his sick desires for her by looking at her pictures on Facebook.
Why was the like button there anyway? Why didn’t it have a confirmation screen?
Panic rising in his throat, he hurriedly typed “how to undo facebook like” into the search bar of his browser and hit enter. However, in his haste, he had accidentally typed the search query as a status update, a status update which was now on his timeline for the whole world to see.
Mind overcome by distress, he slammed the laptop shut, unplugged it, and put it under his bed, as if hiding the tool of his misdeed would somehow lessen the magnitude of his transgression. He shimmied out of his clothes and tried to get to sleep, but his restless thoughts would not leave him. He should have just deleted his account right away…
His phone rang. It was only 10 at night, and a lot of his friends were still out on the town. He picked it up. “Hey.”
There was a burst of laughter on the other end, the laughter of O.J. Mayo. “Yo Brandon, I just saw your post on Facebook. That’s gold!”
Brandon wanted to hang up. “Shut your stupid mouth, O.J.”
“Dude, it’s got 16 likes already. And guess who commented on it?”
Heart dropping like a stone off a cliff, Brandon could only come back with a weak insult. “I bet it was your fat bitch mom begging for a hot slice of Knight pie.”
O.J. didn’t even react to the jab at his mother. “Not even close.” He adopted the high-pitched voice of a teenage girl. “OMG Brandon you are such a perv! Unfriending you now.” He resumed his normal speaking voice. “Looks like you lost out on your one chance to get with Kaytee. I don’t blame you though. Some of her pics are pretty smokin’.”
Brandon groaned. “Don’t remind me. I’ll never get to see those pics again.”
Sensing Brandon’s torment, O.J. became more consoling. “Yo man, don’t get too down about it. There’s always Shandira or Emilee. And you know, I hear that Kaytee has the clap anyway. You don’t want to put a finger in that pie.”
The thought of the two hot, single cheerleaders put Brandon in a somewhat better mood. “Yeah, you’re right. For an unabashed chucker and team cancer, you can be pretty alright sometimes.” He ended the call and sank back down on his pillow, quickly falling into a sleep of sweet dreams.