Nobody read the Terms of Service. They were in a rush to watch the latest unbelievable must-see content from someone who probably died seconds later. It seemed like as soon as anyone knew The Dare existed, it already had a hundred million downloads. Videos from it spilled like viral sewage onto every other app. Lunatics running along subway tracks in neon pink underwear, and chaining themselves to Brazilian trees in the path of clear cutters, and sneaking onto some billionaire’s megayacht to graffiti obscene messages.

Every thirty minutes, The Dare gave all its users three things:

1. Geo-coordinates
2. An impossible activity
3. A chance at attention

The first person to submit a video clearing The Dare would go out to every user. No other videos were shared. Subsequent upload attempts got you a rejection and a lewd message about your parents. But if you got there first, there awaited infamy.

The profits of going viral on The Dare rarely exceeded the medical and legal fees.

By the millions of downloads, users expressed that they didn’t care.

The first time The Dare seemed truly impossible was during the northern wildfires. The world didn’t know which superhumans caused the fires, but the whole world agreed it had to be one of them. There was plenty of gossip about rival gangs getting into fights in that woodland, and the whole mountain range was dry as kindling. Some people insisted it wasn’t superhumans at all, but faulty wiring from a badly regulated electric company.

Regardless, the wildfires became the problem of 39.03 million people.

Those same wildfires became an opportunity for one special attention seeker.

At least thirteen users of The Dare tried to sprint through the narrowest band of the wildfires, resulting in fifteen serious burn cases and two romantic break-ups. ScienceTubers explained ad nauseum that it was not humanly possible to survive the heat or even the smoke inhalation.

It was not humanly possible. It was superhumanly possible.

Drew Hilliker of Genoa, Nevada was the first person to run through, using his superhuman speed to break the sound barrier and cross the entire flaming range in six seconds. He still had to go to the hospital to have his melted GoPro removed, but he livestreamed the surgery on his phone, cackling with his friends the whole time.

Hilliker’s livestream was the most popular thing on the internet for a few minutes. The next Dare was to enter the same wildfires and rescue a trapped firefighter. Such a thing was certain death, and no one could do it, which Wren Nightshade of Manitoba, Canada explained as she sprinted out of the flames with the man over her shoulder.

Nightshade’s video caused two ISPs to crash. No one thought a second speedster would arrive at the wildfires, much less that they would have the cardio to carry a living victim out with them. But Nightshade’s popularity actually peaked the following day, on the livestream where she explained she’d only accepted The Dare’s challenge in order to overshadow her ex, one Drew Hilliker. They shared the same speedster powers, she said, but infidelity was his specialty alone.

Hilliker actually returned to the wildfires and rescued three more firefighters in search of more virality on other streaming apps, but he couldn’t top Wren Nightshade on any one of them. Her mix of speed and spite was too potent for mortal algorithms.

Legacy media questioned if these two speedsters were mentally ill, or if they were real-world superheroes. Users memed on those legacy media outlets until every comments section was closed. Before the discourse could pick up, The Dare had another challenge.

The Dare was to extinguish any plot of burning land that the government couldn’t reach.

Enrique Sanchez, a self-proclaimed technopath, diverted tens of thousands of drones, simply by using his thoughts. Private- and government-owned devices worked in unison to dump water, dig firebreaks, and redistribute smoke to suffocate fires. The internet crowdfunded his bail before he was even arrested.

The Dare moved on.

Two different superhumans broke into the same GenAI company that harvested people’s private data. Both superhumans livestreamed arguing for sole credit while still being pursued by armed guards. Bullets whizzed over their heads as they demanded upvotes.

Several members of the US Congress who were up for reelection speculated that The Dare was possibly operated by foreign actors. They questioned if it shouldn’t be regulated.

Within half an hour, The Dare was to expose hard evidence of those congresspeople receiving bribes from foreign actors.

It took users less than fourteen minutes to secure hard copies of evidence. This time it wasn’t superhumans. It was mere civilians with good VPNs. Law enforcement still descended on the leakers, and The Dare challenged the world to keep the leakers safe. Drew Hilliker and Wren Nightshade broke the sound barrier racing each other to be the first to do it.

The Dare was to demolish Wilbur Hastert’s house and car, and to strip him naked, all before he left the courthouse.

What courthouse? Who was Wilbur Hastert?

It was done before the internet knew the answers. Hastert was a police officer who’d been filmed shooting an unarmed pedestrian who was kneeling on the sidewalk. A judge found Hastert innocent. As the world rejoiced at videos of Hastert’s humiliation, a few noted The Dare had gone live seconds after the verdict.

A drag queen story hour received a massive protest of masked men who were clearly looking for a fight. The Dare was to drop any single one of them into the local sewer. The first superhuman to show up was sprayed with bullets, but she shrugged it off, and before long, every masked man was floating in liquid feces. The videos trended for days.

Fracking legislation was passed against the will of the locals. The Dare was to dismantle the equipment. Superhumans hit them so aggressively that “disintegrated” was the #1 trending word in the world.

A cable news channel dedicated its time to questioning this spate of vigilantism. An affluent host asked: Wasn’t attacking protestors putting innocent lives at risk? Wasn’t destroying corporate property a crime? Was the rule of law being flouted? Shouldn’t government institutions be respected?

The Dare was to take over the channel and broadcast only SpongeBob SquarePants reruns.

By the weekend, SpongeBob was the only thing on every cable channel, except Nickelodeon.

By this time, numerous organizations were trying to take down The Dare app. It was hammered with DNS attacks that somehow never prevented a single person’s access to it. Even national firewalls failed. It was like it refused to not work.

The Dare was de-listed from every major web storefront, although less than a second after de-listing, it reappeared.

The Dare was to divert the water exhaust from any major data center into the taps of any major data CEOs’ home. The internet learned of entire new classes of superpowers as people raced to be the first ones to answer the call.

All servers associated with The Dare’s traffic were raided. Several were explicitly taken offline.

The Dare was to take certain government offices entirely offline.

The code for The Dare was reverse engineered to within every single byte in the search for the people who’d created it. Men in suits promised justice would be done. Several people were arrested and detained without trial.

The Dare was to leave no wall in those prisons standing.

Mysterious explosions happened at server farms and web cafes.

The Dare was to intercept a bomb before it went off and drop it at its point of origin.

Over and over authorities found the guy behind these events.

The Dare never stopped posting.

A senator gave a press conference proclaiming, “This is not heroism. You are not superheroes. Superheroes are supposed to stop bank robbers. They fight crime.”

A reporter followed up, “Do you have a comment on the president’s claim that he personally ordered the bombings of web cafes?”

The senator answered, “I haven’t seen that. I have no comment.”

Soon, everybody in Washington with an ounce of ambition was trying to address The Dare’s threat to freedom and order.

Or, they tried to address it.

The internet threw a party the first day when no politicians could find a way to be heard.

An innocent theory was born from a self-described “loser.” He didn’t work for any government, nor was he a traditional journalist. He was a voyeur addict of The Dare, like millions of others.

“The Dare can’t be stopped,” he said, “because nobody is running The Dare. It just looks like an app. There isn’t a web admin. They can’t find the designer because it wasn’t designed. What we’re all looking at appears to us like an app the same way your mutuals look like friends. The Dare is no normal technopath; what speedsters are to being fast, The Dare is to technology. This is sentient data. A digital person. This is the first app to play superhero.”

His theory was too farfetched. No technopath of that level had ever been discovered.

The Dare was to take down an app, which happened to be where that conspiracy theorist posted.

Instead of getting a tiny bump and some trolling, people noticed the idea getting stifled. One streamer said, “Smells like denial.”

Then everybody was saying it.

The Dare was to divert all power from a cryptocurrency farm.

Across a network of other apps, users challenged each other to track the source of The Dare. They even formatted it like a proper The Dare challenge. IT experts went at it. Any technopaths out there got dogpiled if they didn’t try. White knights argued for The Dare’s anonymity. The arguments didn’t go well.

The Dare didn’t post for forty-eight hours straight.

An unfounded rumor started: So many users chased the technopath at once that some major government was able to sense them. Sensing it, they isolated them. Isolating them, they captured them. Belief was that The Dare was executed when nobody was watching. It wasn’t filmed. There was no archive video. Mysterious drone strikes hit seven different server farms around the globe precisely at the same second, and in that same second half of the world’s tech infrastructure went limp.

Some people claimed that The Dare posted one more update. One final challenge to the internet.

It was brief. If you believed the accounts of those who were online to witness it, it lasted for less than a minute before every VOD and account on the app was completely erased.

The Dare was: DO THE RIGHT THING EVEN IF IT ISN’T FUN.

Or, that’s what some screenshots said. These screenshots circulated widely.

Other screenshots made it seem the final Dare was to do some poorly defined sex act in the Vatican.

Or it was to start “The Revolution.”

Or it was to subscribe to a new monthly vape cartridge delivery service.

So many fakes circulated that it was a wonder anything gained actual mindshare. The DO THE RIGHT THING one bothered enough people that it worked detractors into a buzz. They split every possible hair, explaining every conceivable reason why they couldn’t be expected to take action. The Dare was sanctimonious, and a tool of neoconservatives, and in its worst offense, it was tired and boring and done.

When they inevitably popped up, imposters of The Dare were immediately derided. If The Dare was salacious, then it was just someone grifting. If The Dare was too combative with systems of power, they were preachy. Not a single superhuman answered the prompts. Nothing, no matter how similar to the original Dare, felt authentic to this older, wiser, seasoned internet.

So, nobody did anything.

Except for the people who did many things. Government departments staffed up with both robust human employees and custom GenAI. Laws erasing liberties got wedged into every new piece of legislation. People in intimidating uniforms walked in every place where they didn’t belong.

So, some people did some things. It was hard not to notice.

Some people distracted themselves enough to pretend they didn’t notice. And that, too, was doing something.

Did anybody else do anything?

There was no one left to dare them to.

Although it did feel like it. Didn’t it?

© 2026 John Wiswell