BERKELEY, Calif. — Following a recent hazing incident in which a freshman pledge almost died, Tau Gamma Rho junior and HR representative Bryce Chuck claimed that the fraternity acted in this manner as a postmodern commentary on the excess and hedonism of contemporary society.
“Bro you don’t get it. Like, yeah, that kid almost died because we made him chug a gallon of dog semen and Jägermeister and that’s ‘bad’ or whatever, but, like, we did it to make a greater statement about how society has become increasingly decadent and depraved. And we did that by basically partaking in it. I don’t get why people aren’t on our side. It’s like the same people who don’t get the point of The Wolf of Wall Street,” Chuck declared in between snorting lines of coke and showing us his favorite Jordan Belfort Tik Toks.
Upon request for further comment from Tau Gamma Rho members, Chuck quickly drew his fraternity brothers into a backroom where he appeared to be trying to give them the gist of the concept of postmodernism.
“You just say and do weird fucked up shit and it’s supposed to be artsy. Trust me bro, I read the first three pages of Infinite Jest,” Chuck shouted audibly through the walls. “Oh fuck, I hope that shithead reporter can’t hear us from here. Imagine if he walked in here and found the clean urine stash.”
After the knee-length-gym-short-wearing brothers emerged from their briefing with clearly never-before-opened copies of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, several brothers were open for comment.
“Yeah man, it’s, uh, the post-pre-modern thing. We were just showing how bad it would be if we did something like dropping the pledges off in the woods naked and blindfolded and then making them eat each other’s shit Human Centipede-style,” sophomore Jimmy Mitchell mumbled while avoiding direct eye contact. “But we didn’t actually do that! I mean, we did do that but that’s the whole point, right?”
“Dude, you can’t be here. Like I’m trying to be nice but you have no girls with you. And we also only want young freshmen girls. That’s not creepy though because I’m just making an extended in-person allusion to the toxicity displayed in Taxi Driver, so you can’t report me for employing intertextuality,” senior and two-time wrist-slap recipient Trent Jenson shouted while shoving this reporter out of the house, overlaid with sounds of shoes peeling off the mysteriously sticky floor.
Photo by Clinton Steeds