Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
Erin Dyal began reviewing her son’s school laptop browser history a few years ago because, apparently, she has a deep desire to be horrified by her teenage boy’s browsing habits. She noticed a URL containing the phrase “history tutor.” Her son’s lack of having a history tutor made her suspicious. She visited the site herself. It was a gaming portal, not a history tutor, although the subject matter is somewhat related to history. Somewhat.
Even the splash screen is terrifying. (Evan Productions/Geometry Dash)
The game is “Five Nights at Epstein’s,” a free browser title in which the player attempts to survive five consecutive nights on the private island of the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, evading Epstein and other figures named in the Justice Department’s released files. Industry observers describe the gameplay as derivative of “Five Nights at Freddy’s.” Except with slightly more sex predators, utilized in such a way that it makes FNAF appear downright family-friendly by comparison.
Dyal belongs to FCPS Parents for Intentional Technology, a coalition formed in December 2025 to advocate for less unintentional technology, of which there has lately been a great deal. Inside one shared Google Drive, parents documented entire seasons of television, pirated films, gambling-adjacent flash games, and the Epstein title. The group’s broader policy request is that the school district stop issuing computers to children who, given a computer, immediately do what the rest of us all assumed they were already doing with it. This backs up my personal theory that millennials are just younger boomers, but that’s a subject for another article.
Dyal said teachers cannot reasonably be expected to police every laptop, a point on which her local district appears to concur. “But the gaming,” she said, “there’s no reason why students should be playing games in class and people not shutting that down.” Surviving Epstein’s island, she did not need to add, was harder for some of the adults who visited than others.
This story is based on fully factual news, but if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.
