quote:

Lenny’s been having a hard time. First, there was the car crash. A bystander said he was all right, just a little banged up, but he still had to go to the hospital. A friend tried to cover for him, saying he was texting while driving, but everyone in town knows Lenny has a drinking problem, a problem that’s only gotten worse since he lost his side gig as a gravedigger. Some townspeople felt bad and brought him a bouquet of magnolias in the hospital. It turns out, he was mostly worried about his pet baby raccoons, so one kind soul promised to take care of them for him. Once he got out of the hospital, he mostly dropped off the map, but that wasn’t too unusual — Lenny Crabbitz is always a tough guy to find.

But don’t feel too bad for Lenny; he doesn’t really exist. Lenny’s just a figment of the collective imagination behind /r/HaveWeMet, an occasionally obscene subreddit where complete strangers invent online personas and pretend to know one another. There are now enough figments to fill an entire town, dubbed Lower Duck Pond. Niall O’Neill runs an Irish bar called Pot O’ Beer on Sorenson Street, while Ty is the park ranger at King’s Falls National Park. Meanwhile, on 13th Old Street, the mysterious Zack runs a shop called From Beyond, which has been tenuously linked to the occult. There’s a weatherman who posts daily updates on the conditions so that residents will know if they should bring an umbrella when they leave their fictional houses in the morning. He’s such a celebrity that he even has a merch shop.