The Exterminating Apple

A CalTech teaching assistant has discovered what some say proves that mass formation psychosis is a very real phenomenon, even at the level of everyday grocery fruit.

Ronald Nee Pelton, 26, says he first encountered the apple months ago, when he compared photos taken several weeks earlier on his phone to the apple before him in the shared kitchen of the quantum physics lab. “I was amazed that the markings were so similar. It had to be the same apple. But that seemed impossible.”

Pelton planned to examine the fruit to see how it managed to stay so well preserved but found himself always avoiding the intended task. “It was so frustrating. I figured I had some kind of mental block about it.” So the TA enlisted the help of his roommate, engineering major Kim Yang, to check out the elusive target. Yang agreed instantly.

And never did.

“When Kim couldn’t bring himself to ever even come near the apple, I was like ‘Yo, this is officially off the chain.’ I knew there was something really f**ked up going on.”

But when Pelton and Yang couldn’t get a single other friend to touch the apple, he left a message on Instagram about it that went a little… off the chain.