Like most social media trends kangarooing seemed to come from nowhere. Suddenly videos of people doing it were unavoidable. Facebook was clogged with photos of children and adults participating in the trend. Ubiquitous news coverage warned of kangarooing dangers with examples of how it had gone wrong. “A forty-five year old man in Tulsa while attempting to ‘kangaroo,’ as it’s being called, is now paralyzed from the neck down. A teen athlete in Poughkeepsie wrecked his mother’s car while posing for a photo in the act of kangarooing.”
Devin had dreamed up kangarooing while he was commuting to work. He wasn’t in the mood for music, he had tired of the droning news and he had no audiobooks or podcasts at the ready. He drove in silence. Just the sound of his tires softly whistling over the macadam to keep him company. Mornings were the best time for Devin, his mind was as yet uncluttered by the events of the day. If he’d slept well, his brain was crisp and alert.
At a stoplight he noticed an obese man wearing a sweat suit that could not fully contain his belly. Like the unhappy crescent of an overfed moon the man’s flesh was exposed to the morning air. The man was also wearing a fanny pack, but had turned it to the front for easier access. Because of his girth, he didn’t wear it under his belly but on top of it, using his stomach as a kind of shelf for his little pack of possessions. The man was perfectly content, waddling through the intersection in his foam shoes, slurping on a seventy-two ounce refillable soda with the name Bigfoot stenciled across it. Once across the intersection the man blissfully strode along his route, following his destiny to wherever it led.
Devin shook his head, “That guy just doesn’t care at all. Just lets it all hang out for the world to see.” The light changed and Devin thought about the man, assumed that he was a slothful slob and a sad evolutionary development. “Out of the trees and into the Walmart,” Devin said. But as he drove closer to work, realizing that he was headed somewhere he didn’t want to go to do work he didn’t like, he began to envy the portly soda drinker. The man appeared to be at peace, had no fear, no apparent worries. Maybe Devin had it all wrong. This obese man with the pouch on his belly had achieved what so many of us seek—inner peace. The man was kangarooing.
As Devin logged into his computer at work and went about his daily tasks, he found his mind wandering back to the man with the fanny pack. He reflected on the “dance like no one is watching” movement but rejected it as exhibitionist. If you indeed wanted to dance like no one is watching then do it at home, alone, in your bedroom. Dancing in public, no matter how one feels about it, is by its nature an observed activity and an attempt to draw attention to yourself and by extension to seek outside approval. Devin’s obese hero had no concern for the outside world, he had internalized his locus of control and simply existed. Devin decided to make kangarooing the next big self-help trend.
Over the next month he sold his car and house, and quit his job. He moved into a studio apartment with only scarce furniture. He decided to live by the kangaroo creed. He created a website, podcast, social media accounts and published a book to teach others the way toward inner peace. On weekends he would go downtown and hand out literature and free fanny packs and occasionally proselytize about the way of the kangaroo. He owned three track suits, two pairs of foam shoes and drank as much soda as he liked. It occurred to him that kangarooing was perhaps more than a self-help trend—it could be a religion. He started a Go Fund Me site to find acolytes and to generate funding so he could rent a space to have services. The donations began to trickle in as did potential church members. In the end he raised enough to buy a dilapidated Russian Orthodox church and make it habitable. Devin lived in an apartment in the back and continued his social media outreach.
After a couple of years he managed to recruit a few hundred in-the-flesh church members with many more followers online. He felt that he was doing good work, helping his fellow man and living a meaningful and fulfilling life.
BuzzFeed was the first website to stumble across Devin’s version of kangarooing. From there Huffington Post picked it up, then Vulture, then NPR, then hits on most of the major news and lifestyle sites. Devin’s video about the epiphany he had regarding the obese man and the fanny pack went viral as Devin demonstrated the waddle-of-pride and front-wise positioning of the pack. Soon, people started issuing each other kangaroo challenges, in the spirit of the Ice Bucket Challenge with all proceeds going to Devin’s church. In just a few weeks people and then celebrities around the world were making fools of themselves while wearing a fanny pack. Instead of inner peace, wearing the pack was associated with beautiful people doing stupid things, and laughing madly at how outrageous they were. Because it was a hot viral trend, nobody wanted to be left behind and Devin’s Go Fund Me site brought in millions of dollars in just a few weeks. His book was downloaded ceaselessly and poorly translated into dozens of languages. For two weeks his podcast was ranked number one on iTunes. Then the injuries started to occur. A base jumper stuffed a parachute into a fanny pack that never opened. A frat boy wore a fanny pack as a blindfold as he wobbled drunkenly into traffic and was struck by a bus. Coeds began wearing only fanny packs and short skirts to roam their local bar scene, creating a lustier version of kangarooing than Devin intended.
His inspiration, his religion and his gift to the world had been corrupted. The fanny pack lifestyle on which he modelled his life had become a punchline. A mere blip on the social media radar, fading out as quickly as it had appeared.
Church membership dropped away, as did the contributions. Devin was left with a handful of fervent followers and millions of dollars. Looking out at his tiny flock, adorned in their track suits and bedazzled fanny packs Devin was again inspired. He created a line of track suits with large pouches in the front. He used his remaining followers for labor, and convinced them that sweating over a sewing machine was an enlightened act, like doing a rosary or feeding the poor. He returned to social media to promote the track suits and his creation of US manufacturing jobs. His fame as a job creator grew and before long he was paid a visit by dignitaries who hailed his business as the type that would make America pretty good again. Soon after the visit and associated news coverage, his sales increased to the point that he had to ship much of the manufacturing to China and have “Made in USA” labels sewn into the track suits at his US factory.
The suits could be seen everywhere, with people packing around children, pets, groceries, laptops or anything else the needed to carry hands-free. Unfortunately an unstable, single white man decided to fill his pouch with guns which he took to a mall. He opened fire but had never actually used any of his guns before so only managed to shoot out the skylights and a few windows, but had managed to terrorize hundreds of people. The photo of him in handcuffs with his enormous belly hanging out of kangaroo track suit, his comb-over askew and patchy beard that he’d clearly been trying to grow for years killed any market for Devin’s track suits. He was left with an empty factory and thousands of suits which he sold by the pound to a second-hand clothing merchant who in turn shipped a container of them to needy families in the Russian tundra. To get through the winter, many Siberians could be seen happily ambling about in their track suits, the pocket stuffed with warm bricks.