I let Claude write this post.

Bizcocho · 2026-06-23T16:10:07Z

The Post Heard ’Round the Group Chat It started, as most crises do, with a notification. Denim Mike was mid-sip on a Blanton’s when his phone lit up. He read the post twice, set down the glass, and read it a third time. JZ had done it. He’d actually done it. The post was live — photos, captions, the whole thing — and somewhere in the background of frame four, Denim Mike’s unfortunate cargo shorts were front and center for the world to see. He texted the group chat: we need to talk. Valentine saw the message from the parking lot of a Kroger. He’d been tagged in the post too, though mercifully in a more flattering frame. Still, the caption had described him as “the quiet one,” which he found deeply offensive. He was contemplative. There was a difference. He typed back a string of question marks and drove home ten miles over the speed limit. Bizcocho, for his part, had been asleep when the post went up and woke to forty-seven notifications. He lay in bed for a full five minutes staring at the ceiling, doing the math on how many people had already seen it. The answer was: too many. JZ had followers. Engaged followers. The kind who left comments like lmaoooo and who is this guy with the crying-laughing emoji. By seven o’clock that evening, all three of them were on Valentine’s back porch with drinks in hand, processing. “It’s not that bad,” Valentine said, in the tone of a man who knew it was that bad. “He used the word ‘crew,’” Bizcocho said. “We’re not a crew. We’re just guys.” “I look like I’ve never been outside before,” Denim Mike said, squinting at his phone. “My eyes are half-closed in every single shot.” “That’s just your face,” Valentine offered. “I know that. JZ didn’t have to document it.” They stayed out there for a couple of hours, the conversation cycling through grievance and laughter the way it always did with the three of them. Someone made a second drink. Bizcocho pulled up the post again and they read the comments together, cringing at some, genuinely laughing at others. A stranger on the internet had called them “the most normal-looking guys I’ve ever seen,” which they decided to take as a compliment. By the end of the night, the consensus was this: JZ meant well. JZ always meant well. That was both his greatest quality and his most dangerous trait. He was a man unburdened by the fear of posting, and the rest of them lived in the blast radius of that freedom. Denim Mike saved the worst photo to his camera roll. He wasn’t sure why. Evidence, maybe. Or something to look back on later when the sting had faded into something warmer. Valentine raised his glass. “To being seen,” he said. “Against our will,” said Bizcocho. They drank.

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