Ozempocalypse

Written and Narrated by Mack Devlin Reading Time: Approx. 5 minutes Ozempic: Miracle Drug or a Nightmare Waiting to Happen? I report to you with all the seriousness attendant to earth-shattering revelations, such as the ice wall or the nipple at the top of the Earth. The end is coming, and I’m not talking about a ten-thousand-foot tsunami closing in on Manhattan, conveniently toppling an iconic monument so you know it’s New York City without anyone definitively telling you it’s New York City. This event does not require the dynamic onscreen lettering of a global disaster film. It is a quiet calamity, but it represents a tangible existential threat. There is no sense of drama here, but we may be looking at the total collapse of society. I don’t mean vibrant life giving way to a post-apocalyptic motif of decaying buildings covered in lush, rapidly growing vines, the Earth abiding while humanity is reduced to pockets of barbarians who have miraculously forgotten thousands of years of progress, a new dark age driven by a strange compulsion to keep things as they are. No, this will be subtle. It starts with a pen needle and a shot in the thigh. What follows is weeks of splatter-shot diarrhea, the complete loss of appetite, ruined toilets everywhere, and a complete anatomical apocalypse. What will emerge from these peptide transformations? What will be released from these pharmacologically induced chrysalis states? We imagine the users becoming beautifully slimmed-down models of human perfection, ready to have the fat pulled back by millionaire plastic surgeons. But no, these will not be creepy-ass caterpillars emerging as beautiful f*****g butterflies. These once-vibrant butterball fatties will be miraculously reborn as gag-worthy bags of ossifying joints and brittle bones, the oft-sought but rarely achieved skinny-b***h body type gone horribly wrong. They will be inspirations to some and cautionary tales to others. Weight loss needs to be earned, after all. It can’t come from a needle. It requires going to the gym every spare moment, doing leg presses and lunges while smothered by a cloud of body odor and forty-eight-hour deodorant, then subsisting on delicious, constipation-inducing health food. Even if you’re still a pork nugget when you drop dead, at least you were putting in the work, embracing misery and labor instead of joy and leisure. But is an entire generation’s lack of discipline-inspired weight loss the only pitfall of this magnificent fat-shredding cobra oil? Or is there something deeper, darker, and more sinister threatening humanity’s future? Perhaps. If science fiction has taught this reporter anything, it’s that miracle cures often come with horrible side effects. The power of Ozempic is its uncanny ability to suppress your appetite to such an extreme degree that all food loses its fundamental appeal. Even those good old irresistible foods, like fried chicken and potato chips, will look like dumpster cardboard. Especially anathematic are the foods users hated before that first miracle injection, like cheeseless broccoli or ranch-free carrots. If we wave goodbye to all nutrition, what remains? Where will we find our iron? Where will we find our other vitamins and minerals? I will tell you where: from the blood of those leading healthy lives. They will be ritualistically ingested by hordes of the newly slim, now banded in their loose skin, arms akimbo, waddling along while their physiology adjusts to their creepy Jared Fogle bodies. Their hunger will grow more desperate with each new feeding, like lions in a Michael Douglas movie. Once they taste the red nectar of man, no other claret will soothe. We will first see them as isolated incidents. A half-eaten yoga instructor will be found in a dumpster outside a 7-Eleven in Taos, New Mexico. The act will be blamed on coyotes, but thousands of conspiracy theorists will Google the phrase, “Can a coyote open a dumpster?” Soon after, the severed heads of two gym bros will be discovered in the extended cab of an F-250 in Destin, Florida. No bodies will ever be recovered. When these brutal crimes spread to other nations, the conspiracy din will reach an all-time high, and the media will start taking serious interest in the rumblings. It will be too late. The Ozempic blood fiends will have descended upon all the major cities of the First World. Even nations known for their austerity will fall victim to this all-consuming tide of vein-chugging monsters. Eventually, there will be so few pre-Ozempics left that the cannibalistic enclaves will rise to power, and bloodsucking will not only become the preferred lifestyle but the basis for the entire political system of the planet. There will be peace, but it will come at a terrible cost. Pre-Ozempics will become the new livestock, raised on a diet of iron-rich plants, and everyone will remember the way the world used to be, goddammit. Animation from Studio D-ID Image Generated with Midjourney and Edited with Adobe Express Total Production Time: 7 hours and 34 minutes I could go over my process for days and it will still never be enough effort for the AI police. So, if you’ve come this far and decide to accuse the author of AI usage, I have one thing to say to you: “Your mom is AI.” Get full access to Imperfect Speech at imperfectspeech.substack.com/subscribe