As UW students pass the halfway mark of their first super dooper schmooper normal quarter, many have made a startling and quite frankly disturbing discovery. Daniel Wright, a junior who has spent his entire time at UW making faces and talking to himself under the cover of an N-95, is just now adjusting to the trials and tribulations of an unmasked existence. He says the most jarring part of this new phase of his education is the sharp decline in the perceived attractiveness of his peers. When asked to elaborate, Wright said, “Everyone’s mouths are just so weird, like the bottom half of everyone’s face is way bigger than I was expecting it to be. Everyone’s just butt ugly.” Daniel Wright is now left hopelessly adrift, with no soft warm fantasy to guide him through the brutish hell of earning a marketing degree. 

But Daniel is not the only one. These reports have been echoed in every corner of the UW campus. Yellow teeth, weak chins, and weird mustaches have infected some of UW’s most sexy citizens. It has even been theorized that the downturn in attendance and interest in lecture and quiz sections may be due to the fact that UW faculty are just not living up to the student body’s high, imaginary standards. “I never realized my English professor was ugly. And ugly people can’t be smart so why should I listen to him anyways?” says sophomore Tina Hughes. TAs have suffered a similar if not more gruesome fate. Once hailed as the seductive keepers of knowledge they have now been downgraded to annoying, picky grad students.

But as we have had to sit by and idly watch as our once hot lab partners turn into “that guy with the face from Chem 152,” another problem has arisen. What if it turns out that you are in fact “that guy with the face from Chem 152”?????? Who among us can say that we have upped our shaving regimens, our flossing habits, or our ten-step Korean skincare routines? Fear has gripped undergraduates as each individual fights desperately to not be labeled as a “mask fish.” 

Those who remain masked are our only hope at surviving this dreadfully homely quarter. We now are forced to play the game “immunocompromised or a secret adonis” in order to maintain morale. But the decision made by many to breathe air that doesn’t smell like their own mouths has come with dire consequences. Our whole worldview was violently ripped out from underneath us. The one thing we were absolutely sure about, the one thing we could cling to in times of change, the one solid rock in this ever-shifting and fluid ocean, was that Garrett from econ was lowkey hot. But now … it turns out … he’s just a solid 6.