Nux has passed away.Please stop tagging him.(He keeps replying. We’re trying to hold a funeral here.)

This was his first mistake.

Deep in the park, just inside the range of the public Wi-Fi, he discovered a colony of wild Discord mods. They had laid cardboard over the grass so nobody would accidentally touch it.

A laminated sign read NO WAHMEN.

Billy crouched behind a bush. One of the mods was explaining how Nux would finally be wiped off the face of the earth. Another was taking minutes. A third had muted a pigeon for speaking out of turn.

The plan was flawless. There was a grave, a fourteen-page obituary, and a little sandwich platter. Absolutely nobody had checked whether Nux was available to be dead that weekend.

“Well,” thought Billy. “Can't stop them now.”

He could, of course, have warned his friend. But the mods had laminated things. This was clearly quite far along.

“Out of respect for Nux, there should at least be merch.”

Billy began designing a memorial coin. Solemnly. With the quiet dignity of a man checking whether the skull would still look good on a hoodie.

Then the obituary received a comment.

An awkward silence fell over the clearing.

The pigeon remained muted.

Nux arrived halfway through his own funeral, took a sandwich, and lay down beside the grave to ask whether anyone needed a thumbnail.

The mods retreated to a private channel. The obituary became read-only. The sandwiches were gone.

Billy looked at his memorial design. Then at Nux, still posing beside the grave.

“Fine. You can go on the other side.”

“Can we do the funeral again?” asked Nux. “I wasn't recording.”

He's obviously not dead. He's deciding whether I ATTENDED MY OWN FUNERAL (EMOTIONAL) needs a bigger red arrow.

The mods wanted him gone. He wanted the thumbnail. Billy wanted to know if everyone was done grieving so he could open the merch tab.

And they all lived happily ever after, except the mods, who had accidentally provided free production assistance to the man they were trying to erase.