[Audience members were given paper cups containing half a cocktail weenie with a toothpick stuck in it. Enterprising readers may play along at home; tiny pickles and cheese cubes are acceptable substitutes.]

As the secretary of our order’s reliquary I know I may be speaking out of turn, but I come before you as a humble servant and with offerings.

I’m afraid we have some believers in the house tonight. There will be no healing and no miracles. No potato chips in the shape of Sam Zell crying tears of blood. We have been manipulated into forgetting one of our closest-held truths: There is nothing sexy about a bloated corpse unless it’s paying you.

We are all here tonight because we have shared a sinful romance with the idea of print. We left behind families and careers for the promise of residuals, 24-hour sunshine, abundant Kool-Aid and newsprint that never smudges, not even during our Sunday ritual of going behind the barn, smearing each other with paste and rolling around in the weekend edition. This is what we did for print. And now it’s leaving us.

You’ve done your best. Held the appropriate vigils, worn the shrouds, walked six times backwards around the rusty flat files we cram ourselves into during the Deadlines of Repentance. We rubbed our goats against the grain of their scalps, soaked the excess goat hair in the milk of proofreaders, brought the milk to a boil in a small saucepan, let it simmer then cool in a southern wind, paid respect to the alternate recipe in our special edition occult microwave cookbooks, dunked our heads in it, and tossed our freshly shaved hair on the bonfire to the scratchy gospel of flexi-discs. We’ve always done just as print instructed.

But friends, we’re propping up a false messiah. The print we’ve been desperately trying to sustain has no claim on us. Once it was powerful, something to aspire to. But gradually, of its own free will, it’s become isolated and irrational, gorging itself on hotdogs until dawn and insisting it can swim out to sea and be welcome on any foreign shore, such is the reach of its influence. Clearly, our father is possessed. I’m not certified in exorcisms, but I know when to call upon my training as a passive observer and let it drown.

I stood by and watched print gulp down water as it sputtered on about its own importance. The awards, the lists, the time it went on Oprah— losing circulation, turning blue, cries of “Someone blurb me” echoing off the cliffs we’re supposed to throw ourselves off of following this ceremony.

It stopped thrashing and floated there, such a short distance out that it could have swam back on its own. It must have made peace with its fate, maybe in its final moments abandoned its selfish desire to take us all with it. If it needed me, if it asked, I would’ve met it halfway and dragged it in.

Turning toward shore, it shouted: Aren’t I too big to fail? Picked up by a nearby banking cruise, the distress call was returned with only laughter. Print was never meant to get so big. And really, by comparison, it wasn’t. It drifted back, landing itself on shore with a sloshy thud, wrinkled and swelling at the same time as it dried, not quite emitting the smell of death yet but of a musty basement.

Big print fed on aspirations. It only floated this long on the delusions of loyal believers. We indulged it, thinking one day it might see us as its equal.

If you have been a believer in print as an industry, I’m sorry for your loss, but rest assured that it was never really yours to lose. Print, as we knew it, is still heaving up sludge on the beach and trying to sell joggers ads for used appliances. You can try to resuscitate it if you want, or sit around and wait for the resurrection, or leap to your own deaths as previously scheduled. But you’ll be leaving behind all the smaller, vulnerable cultures we’ve been nurturing in its image. [Remove weenie.] We’re responsible for them, to help them grow, and they can’t survive on us alone. It’s no longer possible to be your own audience. Did you eat your cocktail weenie? You have just cannibalized your own culture.

All the professionals and professional aspirants, please rise.

All the deliberate nonprofessionals, please rise.

I’d like to acknowledge the people who are still seated.

They are the real audience. The real audience is the people who don’t have a financial or reputational stake in print culture, but show up anyway. Please take a moment to notice how small the real audience actually is. This is why we’re in trouble.

All rise.

Please remove your cocktail weenie from your cup with your left hand and hold it in front of you. With your right hand, raise your cup. Turn your cocktail weenie so that the toothpick faces left. Please stab your neighbor’s cocktail weenie. We have met the post-apocalypse and it is us. Join or die.