Have you heard that we’re living in a simulation? This is a theory that has gained currency recently – embraced by real-life Bond villains like Elon Musk and smartbonces like Neil deGrasse Tyson (whose name along is surely more proof) – spurred on by WTF phenomena such as Donald Trumps, Brexit and people thinking Catfish and the Bottlemen are a good band. But all of them pale into insignificance when you consider that there’s an advert for a product called VIPoo you spray into a toilet before taking a shit. The VIPoo advert is, as far as I’m concerned, indisputable evidence that we’re living in a simulation.
Why? I’ll tell you. The chances are that our universe is a simulation – yes, like in The Matrix – because we are now capable of running complex simulations. And when our simulation becomes sufficiently lifelike the people within that simulation will start running simulations of their own. And so on. But the odds that, out of a possibly infinite number of simulations, we are the originals is pretty unlikely.
What’s more something seems to be going wrong with our own universe: Trump, Brexit, Le Pen, Ed Sheeran, Leicester City… That they have all enjoyed an unlikely success suggests that someone is meddling with our universe: a naughty toddler, a mad scientist, someone listlessly playing Sim City while lazily cracking one out to their version of Youporn. Stuff like this that is totally inexplicable is a worrying indication that we’re living in a computer simulation.
Still, you’d want more proof than that before running into the streets naked, gorging yourself on Krispy Kremes and fags, and trying to shag that person you suspect fancies you at work in the bogs. Brace yourself, for I have found it.
It’s this VIPoo advert and I’m going to attempt to describe it. A Hollywood starlet is at a red carpet event when she realises she has to drop off the kids in a nearby water closet. Naturally she’s worried about stinking out the only unisex toilet in the building, but it’s OK, she can deposit her oddly doughnut-shapped stools into a bowl that has been secured by a spray that rejoices in the name VIPoo.
Hollywood’s biggest director – a man who looks like he’s more than capable of releasing some massive turds, whether on celluloid or not, follows her to the lavatory, wafts some toilet smells towards his face and smiles appreciatively.
Let’s pause to take this in. This is a real advert – not some 90s clip show or LOL-some internet creation. It’s not an April Fool’s and it’s not a viral advert. It’s real. And that has some serious ramifications for concepts of free will, evil and the entire foundation of science, religion, ethics and knowledge itself when you think about it.
Because if VIPoo is real, the universe is not. It’s the straw that broke the camel’s back, the glitch in the machine, the black cat in the room. It’s absurd, it’s ridiculous, it’s deliriously awful. Nothing like this could happen in a rational universe.
The VIPoo advert is proof that we’re living in a simulation. And even though that terrifies me on a fundamental level I can take some solace from the fact.
If I’m not real then so be it. But at least the VIPoo advert isn’t real either. Or Catfish and the Bottlemen.
• NB. There is another one and if anything it’s even worse. Like I said, simulation.