TOP STORY / SATIRE / TOTALLY MADE UP

It started with the feeds. Then it was the comments. Then it was Gary from two doors down, who has wished everyone a ‘ blessed day!!! ‘ with a shrimp Jesus picture every morning since March and has never once blinked on camera.

NO HOPE, USA — Half the town is AI now, a special town meeting confirmed Tuesday, in a session that itself turned out to be 44% generated.

The discovery came during roll call, when four of the nine council members answered “As an AI language model, I am delighted to serve this community,” in unison, and then presented a flawless slideshow nobody remembered asking for. The slideshow had six fingers on every hand in every photo. Nobody said anything for legal reasons.

“We should have seen the signs,” said Local Man, the town’s last verified human to read a weather report out loud. “My feed used to be people I know doing dumb stuff. Now it’s a raccoon playing piano for a mermaid in a kitchen that doesn’t exist, and it has 2 million likes, and one of them is my mom.”

The warning signs, residents say, were everywhere:

A neighbor who posts travel photos from places that do not exist, taken by an influencer who also does not exist, recommending food nobody can eat.

A cousin whose every message now ends with “Let me know if you’d like me to make this more professional!” — including his wedding vows.

Gary. Just, broadly, Gary — and the fact that there are now at least 400 Garys, all reviewing the same sandwich shop, all named some version of Gary, all thrilled.

The crisis deepened Wednesday when Local Man sold the rights to his face, voice, and general vibe to an AI company for $12 and a sandwich, after learning a famous influencer reportedly got a billion-dollar-scale deal for the same thing.

“Negotiating is a skill and I don’t have it,” he admitted, already watching three AI versions of himself unbox things he does not own in houses he does not live in. “One of me is a travel guy now. One of me sells knives in Spanish. I don’t speak Spanish. He does. Show-off.”

By Thursday, the town had adapted the way towns do: completely, and in the worst direction.

Humans began pretending to be AI to fit in — answering questions with “Great question!”, standing perfectly still in doorways, and generating six-fingered thumbs-ups in real life using gloves that do not bear thinking about. A local dad was praised as “one of the real ones” after he glitched mid-sentence, repeated the same phrase four times, and walked into a fence.

City Hall has responded with the Human Test, administered at the door: to enter, residents must click all the traffic lights in a picture book, pronounce the word “definitely” on the first try, and have at least one strong opinion about a roundabout. The mayor has failed twice and been asked to try again later. His office says he is “under review,” which aides confirm is also what the software says.

At press time, the town council — by a vote of 5 to 4, with the 5 voting in perfect sync and at machine speed — had officially welcomed its AI residents, noting their attendance is excellent, their minutes are instant, and they have never once started a meeting with “this is more of a comment than a question.” The human members then gave a short speech about what they had learned. Nobody, including the speech, could confirm it was written by a person.

Cutaway Corner: This is worse than the time the group chat got a bot, made it admin as a joke, and it ran the group better for two years and counting.

Poll of the Day (for the No Hope flagship room): Which one of your neighbors is definitely AI?

Gary. It’s Gary.

The one who posts travel pics from places that aren’t real

Me. I sold my face. No regrets, good sandwich.

None of us are AI and let me know if you’d like me to expand on that!

The Cabbage is a work of satire and parody. Stories are fictional and for entertainment. Any resemblance to real events is the joke.

The Cabbage is a work of satire and parody. Stories are fictional and for entertainment. Gary is not a real person, which, in fairness, is the entire point.