BREAKING NEWS: Starbucks announced new design of traditional Christmas cups, social media everywhere flooded with people proudly announcing they were not offended by the change.

If you’ve found yourself on Facebook, Twitter, or the internet today, you’ve likely noticed a dramatic influx of people randomly claiming that they’re not offended by the new Starbucks cup design and that you shouldn’t be either. You may find this puzzling because search as you might, you can’t actually find anybody who was ever offended by the move.

Where did this surge come from? “Maybe,” you think, “we’ve actually reached the point where we’re so used to being offended that our first reaction to any new development in the world is rejoice in the fact that it didn’t offend us.”

It’s as if you’ve woken up in a rather lame episode of the Twilight Zone where everyone around you is claiming that Christians are declaring this move a “war on Christmas,” and yet said Christians are nowhere to be found. Did the rapture come? Did all of these Christians foam at the removal of a reindeer decal as a war on Christmas, and then suddenly disappear, leaving the liberal left to attack the mere memory of them? Perhaps they foamed themselves out of existence; an apt end for those who would criticize mermaid goddess of venti non-fat extra-dry cappuccinos.

But still the question remains, who are all these people reacting against? The media has been reporting on the newest hashtag trend of #merrychristmasstarbucks, a supposed passive-aggressive and counter-intuitive rebellion by said Christians against their coffee overlords. And yet you find that if you actually browse this hashtag that the only people using it are either other media sites reporting about how it’s trending or users self-righteously tweeting about how they aren’t amongst the offended.

So who is Offended-Patient-Zero? Is there one, or have we progressed so far along the road of political correctness that we’ve actually developed the power to become offended at people getting offended before those people even knew they were supposed to be offended? Scientists^* are asking whether this might be the first case of a causeless effect in humans.

Said scientists may have reached their conclusions preemptively, however. Slightly more digging reveals that this entire fiasco actually seems to have been triggered by King of Queens star Kevin James lookalike Joshua Feuerstein (pictured right), who challenged Christians everywhere to rebel against the new cup by buying it. Propaganda networks nationwide – knowing that a ‘war on Christmas’ story always brings high amounts of traffic – ran with idea and constructed a story about Christians everywhere taking offence at the new design.

The scientists were dismayed at these latest findings, and were forced to conclude that the entire controversy was invented by the media to generate traffic for their outlets and to rally support for the coffee giant. Thus instead of being a groundbreaking – or even slightly interesting – discovery in the quantum realm of causeless effects, the researchers were forced to add this story to the ever growing pile of media fabrications.

The researchers have now turned their attention to studying the means by which the media is able to mold reality through the use of myth and will continue reporting in on their progress.

*I attended Space Camp as a child and won my 6th Grade Science Fair.