The first reported event occurred at a comedy club in San Diego, California.

A comedian was in the middle of a set when he suddenly began looking down at his pocket distractedly. The crowd was not responding to his material and they were all looking at their phones.

Then the comedian, a man named James Bigowski, pulled out his own cell phone and started playing with it, wandering off the stage and out the front door of the building. He was hit by oncoming traffic several minutes later after jaywalking across a busy intersection. Witnesses said his eyes were glued to his phone screen.

There were thousands of similar deaths that night and traffic ground to a halt across all major highways and thoroughfares.

That was the official start of what would be dubbed “The Attention Crisis” by survivors. The lucky ones who saw what was happening and destroyed their phones and laptops immediately.

Nobody knew what was causing it. Some speculated it was a subliminal message sent by a foreign government, but others said they had seen this coming a long time before. Social media and cell phones had turned us all into slobbering zombies, our eyes constantly staring at screens, the real world lonely and forgotten.

Airplanes began to collide and fall from the sky, the pilots too distracted scrolling Tiktok to maintain their flight patterns. The air traffic controllers staged an impromptu walkout from every airport, streaming live on Twitch. They held their cell phones in their hands, the blank glow of the screens lighting up their flickering faces as they filed out of the terminals.

Students of colleges and universities, high schools and middle schools, staged unscheduled walkouts while browsing Reddit and shooting the shit on Discord. The professors and teachers followed suit, browsing Facebook and Instagram, posting about their political beliefs and sharing selfies and old restaurant pics.

The power grid soon went down worldwide, the supply chain ceased to function, and the planet descended into chaos.

My family and I have managed to start rebuilding our lives, moving out to the furthest reaches of the country and away from civilization.

Which is why I was surprised to find this old thing lying in a field the other day, half buried.

I dusted it off and tried the power button, ignoring that growing sense of dread I was feeling in my belly.

The phone still worked!

Maybe I’ll play with it out here in this field, just for a little while…

THIS PHONE WAS RECENTLY FOUND CLUTCHED IN THE HAND OF A DEAD MAN IN A FIELD. HE HAD WRITTEN OUT THIS MESSAGE, AS IF TO REMIND HIMSELF OF WHAT WAS AT STAKE.

DON’T FORGET, KIDS.

CELL PHONES = DEATH

IF YOU SEE AN OLD PHONE, LEAVE IT ALONE!

Brought to you by the Council for Protection of Children est. 2028