Insufficient Stories by Patrick Alexander

The Despot

There was a nation once bountiful and prosperous, with fruit and that, that now groaned and withered under the rule of a ruthless despot, named Billy the Despot.

‘Great Leader Still Great – Wow, What a Guy,’ said the newspaper. In fact, Billy was a turd, but if you ever said so, they’d cut your dick off. If you were a woman, they’d cut your husband’s dick off, then sew it onto you, then cut it off. Billy was fucked in the head.

He would do shit like film himself doing bad and ludicrous dance moves to ‘Around the World’ by Daft Punk in various public locations, but with a straight face, then edit together a kind-of-amateurish, but-actually-kind-of-snappy-and-professional video of it, and upload it to his YouTube channel. Every citizen had to view this tedious crap multiple times, and leave comments like:

ha ha great leader this is fckn rad!!! nice moves bro

and

lol this is funy but actually ur a relly good dancer <3 <3

and then upvote any comments left by Cabinet members.

It was the role of farms and factories in this country to produce props for photographs. At least once a week, the front page of the newspaper would have a big picture of Billy inspecting a row of fine spanners, or an impressive pumpkin. It was important for citizens to see that they had spanners and pumpkins, since they didn’t have spanners or pumpkins. (They all had internet access though. Billy’s YouTube, Twitter and Tumblr pages constituted one hundred percent of the internet.)

One day the newspaper ran a picture of Billy eating a fine, impressive banana. The regime collapsed overnight, and the starving masses fed on the flesh of the privileged. The fact is, no-one can eat a banana without looking a bit silly.

Billy escaped to a neighbouring country, and lived out his days in comfort. But whenever he made a YouTube video, though it still got millions of views, nearly everyone clicked the ‘thumbs down’ button. And for the rest of his life, because Billy was so silly, people all over the world called him, “You fucking cunt.”