At exactly 2:07 p.m. on Monday, April 8th, local indie emo boy, Raven Smith, was seen staring directly at the eclipse. Easily identified by his split-dyed hair, chunky silver rings, and botched eyebrow slit, some of his concerned friends immediately approached him to ask why he would purposely burn his retinas. With red, watery eyes, he proudly said, “I’d rather be blind than continue to watch the modern horrors of our fucked-up world.”

Despite constantly wearing deceiving blue light glasses to seem cool, Smith actually has 20/20 vision, so he had to stare at the eclipse for a solid minute before reaching permanent blindness. It was certainly quite a feat, but he attests that it was completely worth it. “In life you have to take a stand for something,” he said, “and while I won’t do anything to stop the modern horrors of course, I can no longer be complicit in witnessing them.”

Upon being asked to elaborate on these “modern horrors,” Smith explained that the severity of the environmental crisis recently became incredibly clear to him when his family suffered from an earthquake in New York. “I mean hurricanes in New Orleans, fires in California — those things are expected,” he explained, “but an earthquake in New York?! That’s where I draw the line. My parents are still shaken up about it, especially because they felt it more than others in their building. Because they’re higher up. Well, because they’re on the top floor. I mean, because they’re in the penthouse. It’s just really tragic.”

Now that he’s pleased with his brief stint at pointless activism, Smith plans to get $4000 LASIK surgery next month.