At five in the morning, a broadcast cut cleanly across the planet: China had taken a hard line on the global sensation Teenieping.

“Teenieping,” a spokesperson declared, with a severity that seemed almost ceremonial, “is a plagiarism of China’s unwanted one.”

It was delivered in Chinese, of course.
And yet, somehow, I understood every word.

Morning arrived as it always does—quietly, without asking permission. But before I even opened my eyes, the phrase had already settled in, looping insistently: the unwanted one.

The term itself is deceptively plain. It refers to someone burdensome, faintly inconvenient to have around—an ill-fitting presence within the choreography of a group. The kind of person who lingers too long, speaks a little off-beat, disrupts the unspoken rhythm of things. (—by ChatGPT)

Every circle, one suspects, produces its own version.

Which raises a more difficult question, one that resists the tidy authority of definitions:
Who, exactly, is the unwanted one on this planet?

@Image: SAMG Entertainment