Monday 4th October 2021, c.10:45pm BST.
Hello and welcome to the totally real and not made up Cheese Grater Live News Report (otherwise known by our snappier name, C.G.L.N.R). The time is 46 minutes past the 22nd o’clock and we are reporting live from sketch in Mayfair, London.
Unusually, this beautiful establishment is eerily empty, save for a couple of conventionally attractive young white women in the bathroom. Both are clad in SHEIN and/or PrettyLittleThing and are huddled, weeping, in the fetal position against egg-shaped pods. We have repeatedly tried to reach them for comment but to no avail, save for one of the girls who, between sobs, wailed: “Instagram, Facebook AND WhatsApp have been down for AGES, and now even TikTok isn’t loading. How am I supposed to post about my 69th month anniversary of being an influencer now?! Tweet about it like some sort of cretin?”
It seems like we won’t be getting much more information from sketch’s interior, so we head outside and find a group of c.15 people sitting in a circle.They are sat down with their eyes closed, their arms linked (with each other) and their legs crossed (not with each other). A Bluetooth speaker is placed in the middle. Upon closer inspection, we find that it is playing the same three sentences over and over again in Kourtney Kardashian’s voice: “I do not chase. I attract. Whatever is meant for me will simply find me.”
One woman briefly steps out of the circle to take a phone call (we try not to eavesdrop, but, due to proximity, we couldn’t help but catch some words: ‘engagement’, ‘hashtag oh oh tee dee’ and ‘Gwyneth Paltrow’s vagina candle’). As she puts her phone back in her pocket, we leap towards her, before she is able to re-enter the cult-like circle. She introduces herself as influencer brand manager, Elisabeth Holmes (“with an s! So unfortunate that we have such similar names. I would never sell something that pretends to have more value than it actually does.”)
Ms. Holmes explains that – [MUFFLED YELPS, CAMERA SUDDENLY GOES BLACK]
*The C.G.L.N.R team later informed us that it was discovered that Instagram etc. had started working again. The team was promptly knocked over by a wave of people scrambling to get back into sketch.
