In One Socket, A Revival
First it was Hesiod Amazonson, the 125-year-old bad boy of Elderporn, who sported one in his Super Bowl halftime performance. Then teachers noticed a certain glitter when they surveilled their adolescent MOOC students, particularly students in their rebellious early thirties. Finally, Jaden knew it was a trend: “monocles are back,” he says.
Jaden, who like most oligarchs uses only one name, owns the hereditary patent on circular objects. “The number of people licensing our geometric intellectual property to print monocles at home has doubled in the past two HBO seasons.”
Trend-watchers attribute the new fad to a desire for a sense of propriety, as the pendulum swings back from last season’s craze for provocative surgical augmentation. Asked about monocles, Dr HashtagTeachingIt, Professor of Awesome Studies at TheUniversity said, “IMHO after ‘face-ticles’ jumped the shark, ppl r looking 4 a new thing that has not jumped ne sharks. This new thing is a new thing that has not jumped ne sharks.”
This efflorescence of personal expression has its dark side, though. One America Prime customer, who chose to remain nameless as he negotiates his book deal, recounts taking a shortcut through an America Classic district, where the Classic customers, seeing his monocle, began to violence him with hatespeech. Fortunately, the customer had boosted his chillmeds before walking through the Classic district, and their hatewords had no triggering effect. The customer, whose insurance plan includes pre-emptive security, called a Prime Customer Support Detachment to administer corrective stimuli to the offending Classic customers, and escaped with his eyepiece intact.
