Badger Badger

It began on September 12th, 2024. 

Liam Woodsworth, a photographer of little fame, posted an image of the Wisconsin forests that would change the world. The image was mostly trees, but you could see a badger standing on its hind legs, staring at the camera. Badgers weren't supposed to do that…and there was something in its eyes that nobody could place. Liam was as confused as everyone else. People became fascinated with this inexplicable image.

And people started going missing. But they always do.

The image went viral. #WhatTheBadgerDoin was a top hashtag on Twitter for weeks. The image would be captioned ridiculous things, and spread across Discord servers and 4chan boards and far more obscure forums. There was just something compelling about the image that nobody could put into words. It didn't matter where you went on the Internet. The Badger was there. Watching you.

It wasn't your fault, Liam. Someone else violated the treaty.

Digital artist Jonathan Winter of Tennessee became obsessed with the image. Unhealthily obsessed. He was convinced it wasn't real, that this was the greatest American hoax since the jackalope. He spent hours staring at the bright light of his computer monitor, agonizing over every pixel of the image in an attempt to prove the involvement of Photoshop or AI. He started a group on Facebook of people who believed it was fake, but their theories quickly went off the deep end. Marketing stunt, government plant, distraction from the election, deep state experiments on propaganda. Jonathan was so invested in the investigation, he didn't even notice the changes to his body until they made his wife scream.

What's black, white, and red all over? Someone who knew too much.

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And the algorithms weigh in, with their invisible hands and copper minds. They spread one word, whispering it to us in our sleep. Badger badger badger badger.

You know, people never really talked about badgers before all this. You always heard about bears and raccoons tearing through people's trash, or coyotes taking cats or skunks skunking dogs, or deer getting wrecked by cars or cars getting wrecked by deer. Why did we never think about badgers before this? Perhaps an animal only matters when it intrudes on something.

Perhaps that is why we talk about ourselves so much.

The badger leaked from the digital world into the real one. T-Shirts and posters and plushies featured the iconic image. A mural was painted in Chicago. Graffiti was spewed all over Detroit. The Simpsons made a reference to it, then a whole episode around it. It was brought up in a presidential debate. A horror movie was in the works by A24. Liam wished he'd copyrighted the damn thing, or at least that's what people thought he wished, but really he just wished she would come home, please, she's all he had and now she was gone...

Meanwhile, Jonathan Winter had nothing at all, nothing but his claws and fur.

There was also a statue of the badger built in Manado, which briefly reminded the world that Indonesia existed, except a lot of people mixed up Indonesia with India, and then a lot of Americans thought of American Indians and not Indian Indians, but of course many people consider Native American the more progressive term, and yet people often forgot the Native part of that, so eventually people just thought Americans built the statue. But where did they build the statue again? Probably Portland, I don't know, that seems like something Portland would do. Well, you'd think it would be somewhere in Wisconsin…the point is, there's a statue now.

Um, actually, it was built in Indonesia, you American idiots! So proclaims the British man who could not name one other fact about Indonesia under gunpoint.

Badgers started showing up in weird places. I mean, the Empire State Building is a bit odd, but Iran? Have you ever heard of a badger in the Middle East? So asked the layman. Well, there's a few species that live in northern countries, like Lebanon and Syria, said the biologists. Okay, but it was an American badger, in Iran, which is clearly a sign from God, proclaimed the patriots. What if someone was just keeping one as a pet, or selling it for the fur trade, said the skeptics. Who cares?! So cried the politicians, who thought that the only important things in the Middle East are oil and terrorism, who's words shaped the thoughts of the layman just as much as that specter dubbed the algorithm. 

Never mind the steady rise of unsolved missing person cases in Iran. That didn't generate enough engagement.

That steady rise was happening across the globe, or at least everywhere that had Internet access. I mean, maybe people were going missing in some uncontacted tribe on an isle in the Atlantic, but how am I supposed to know that? They're uncontacted, it's in the name. Well, just like "American" is in the name of American badger, and yet there was one in Iran. In fact, American badgers were appearing all across the world, their population rising at a similar rate as our population's decline.

Gaze upon my badgers, oh mighty badgers, for I am Badger, badger of badgers.

Supply lines fell apart. Governments collapsed. There were failed attempts to recreate the Badger image, featuring other animals like deer or lions or Komodo dragons standing on hind legs, but a bad Photoshop job was a change of pace that the Midjourney slop flooding the internet these days. I mean, come on, that horse has three ears! Teenager Caleb Calloway of Sacramento made an ironic joke with a video of their corgi standing on its hind legs for a few seconds. 

"Oh my God, guys, I just had a supernatural experience. This dog is standing on two legs! So scary! I'm pissing my pants as we speak!" 

He turned the camera off and gave the dog a treat. The video blew up on TikTok, but sadly, Caleb never got to see his success. Neither did so many who thought too much about that photo of the Badger. If you stared long enough into the badger's eyes, you could swear you were being watched. Some started to finally connect the dots between the rising popularity of the image, and the rising population of badgers, with the decline of the human population and human society as a whole. But those people were called crazy, compared to flat earthers, until it was too late. 

But it had been too late long before.

Some define reality as the collective perception of humans. How else can it be defined? So if everyone believes the world is flat, then the world is flat. If everyone believes the world is round, then the world is round. If everyone believes the world is badger…you get the point. From this collective perception, we can make inferences. If a man can act like a woman, then a woman can act like a man. If a badger can act like a man, then a man can act like a badger. And therefore a woman can act like a badger. And therefore we're all only a step or two away from a badger, or so deems the collective perception. One photo isn't enough to change the collective perception. But the same photo, remixed and recreated and regurgitated hundreds of thousands of millions of times…

In between September 12th, 2024 and September 12th, 2025, the human population went from 8 billion to 8 million. What was left behind was overrun by badgers, some standing on hind legs.

Of course, the fundamental flaw with this idea of "reality" is the assumption that humans are the only beings with a perception of reality. Consider the prospect that there may be others, hiding in the woods. Consider the prospect that we no longer need horseshoes, for steel has defined our world for centuries. Consider how deforestation and pollution desecrate the homes of these things, making them as desperate as a cornered…a cornered mouse, let's go with a mouse. Consider how a mouse with cheese and circus won't have nearly as much strength to fight, especially when it's part of the circus, one grand circus of copper wires. Consider how the old things know this.

These are old things, make no mistake. Older than age itself.

Consider how these old things survived in human society only as ideas, and yet how powerful an idea can prove, even if the idea comes from just one photo, because in the modern age all it takes is one photo at the right place at the right time. Or perhaps the wrong place, at the wrong time, if it leads to the end of the world. Because an idea is dangerous. Words are dangerous because they carry these ideas, and a picture speaks a thousand words. 

The world does not end with a bang, but with a badger.

Badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger.