NEW YORK — City officials are warning area residents to stay indoors for fear they might get stuck in a never-ending chit-chat loop following a 4.7 magnitude earthquake.
“One of the most dangerous after-effects of an earthquake is the chatter locals share following the event, which can be very detrimental to a New Yorker’s mental health,” said Mayor Eric Adams. “This is a time when people might want to ask you how you’re doing, where you were when the quake hit, or whether or not anything broke inside your home. Please do not engage in senseless small talk, and stay indoors until everyone forgets about this. In stressful times like these anyone can be sucked into uncomfortable conversation with a strange person they don’t want to talk to who will take up several minutes of their time.”
Small business owners throughout the city are terrified of what will come their way today.
“I don’t know if I can take much more of this, it’s been less than two hours and I’ve already had the same exact conversation with at least 40 different people,” said Brooklyn deli worker Henry Suarez. “My one buddy has a customer at his store who is always asking him about ‘the game.’ I say thank god I don’t watch sports, I don’t know if I can keep up with that kinda yammering every day. But now with this earthquake, I am horrified, everyone and their mother is going to come in here and talk my ear off about how scared they were when their apartment wobbled for two minutes. I just want to make sandwiches, I almost wish we were back in peak Covid when everyone was scared to open their mouth.”
Experts from California are warning New York residents about the dangers of post-earthquake conversations.
“One of the worst parts of an earthquake are the texts from out-of-state friends asking if you are ok,” said Los Angeles-based sociologist Marcia Flores. “We expect most people in Buffalo right now are responding to people over 1,000 miles away saying ‘No, the earthquake was nowhere near us. All good here.’ This might seem harmless, but these text exchanges can lead to situations where people say ‘We don’t talk enough, give me a call sometime next week.’ And without warning you’re stuck talking to one of your cousins that just got a third DUI who wants to borrow money.”
At press time, the governor informed residents that if they were feeling any effects of small talk coming on, to immediately drop to the floor and cover their ears to protect themselves from bad conversation.