To All Unimaginative Pranksters,
Stop sending letters to our station claiming you’re stuck in a day-repeating time loop and imploring us to, “put out an APB out to all time dilation scientists in the Richmond, VA area.” That’s not what we do here. We run a reputable news station, not a casting call. Our focus has, and always will be, to report local crimes that inspire fear for certain community groups, provide filler in-between ads for constipation medication, and guess the weather worse than your phone does.
We won’t be tricked into running a fake story about someone stuck in October 21st because it’d mean we’d have to run the story every time we get a letter. Truth be told, our station fields at least one of these letters a day. We know they’re fake because the name of the trapped person always changes. At this rate, we’d be running them more than segments on cops shooting, “‘teenagers’ wearing sweatshirts with hoods.” Our interns truly don’t have the time or patience to continue opening letters that implore, “anyone to believe them because this is their last hope before abandoning the search for a way out and taking up ‘toastering their baths’ again.” If you’re going to make light of suicide (which we certainly don’t condone), at least pick something feasible like ingesting cyanide teeth or leaping into a tiger cage covered in honey. We’ve had to devote an entire intern position to fielding these letters and drafting responses, when they should be gaining meaningful experience propagandizing the news to favor politicians that promote the brand of hate speech we like best. You’re robbing the next Matt Lauer of his chance to rise to a position of power. Congratulations, you careless punks, you’re ruining futures.
It just doesn’t make sense to us why you’d continue sending the same story each day. Like clockwork you, “stumbled upon an elderly woman in the woods who spits rodent blood in your face before cackling & disappearing.” But each day you change your name and the date you’re stuck in as a means of convincing us. You think you’d learn after the first few letters didn’t work, not to keep sending them. It’s especially heartless that you’re using the names of people who recently went missing. Some jokes go too far and your lack of sensitivity to their families is telling of your character.
Now, if you change your tune and decide to send us tips on potential serial killers, we’re more than happy to run those with little to no questions asked or follow-up fact-checking. Anything to be featured in a future Netflix documentary. If it only nets us some satirized Hulu original, we won’t offer payment.
So let this be the first and only notice to future letter senders: if you claim to be stuck in an endless 24-hour loop on a particular day, we won’t run your story. It’s simply not news. The letters will go right into the fire we keep going in our offices 24/7.
