10 Signs We're Living in a Simulation

Are we living in a computer simulation? To borrow a Magic 8-Ball phrase, signs point to yes. So many things have happened over the past few months that can only be explained as glitches in a computer game meant to have taken some other course of action. 

The simulation seemed to start glitching on a regular basis starting in November of 2016. Couldn't tell you what triggered it... (Of course I can. I just don't want to mention it.) But since then, things have gone haywire. And it doesn't seem like the simulation will be allowing us a break anytime soon.

Minutes before President Donald Trump addressed the nation with updates on the coronavirus, it was revealed that the person in the pastel bear costume on The Masked Singer was former vice presidential candidate and nationwide joke Sarah Palin. She sang "Baby Got Back" while people cheered and clapped and the rest of us sat there, mouths agape in horror, unsure how this is real life.

As @OhNoSheTwint wrote, "Sarah Palin on TV singing "Baby Got Back" in a bear costume to raucous applaud and laughter cutting to Trump’s statement about a deadly pandemic that he’s doing pretty much nothing about sums up present day America nicely."

Once you watch this clip of Joy Behar gifting her co-hosts trays of lasagna on a Christmas episode of The View, you'll never be able to stop thinking about it. 

The giant "The Joy of Lasagna" sign behind them just adds to the simulation-ness of it all. This can't be real life. This can't be what daytime television is in a world filled with real people. The only explanation is that we are characters in some sick lasagna-lover's game.

Honestly, the entire season of Love Is Blind made me believe the simulation rebooted back to like, 2008. The blind dating show was a throwback to a time when we were obsessed with vapid, pretty people's drama and Nick Lachey was more relevant. 

Obviously, Jessica was the standout villain of the show, if for no other reason than she let her golden retriever lick wine out of her glass and the went on drinking it like nothing happened. It's the wine lick heard 'round the world, at once horrifying and bold. 

Toward the end of 2019, when The Handmaid's Tale TV show was all the rage, people started taking the imagery from the dystopian book adaptation way too far. Kylie Jenner threw her friend a Handmaid's Tale-themed birthday party, which completely missed the point.

But perhaps worse than Kylie Jenner taking duckface selfies in the mirror while wearing a bonnet and a red cloak were the bride and groom who took wedding photos in front of "the wall" with a row of handmaids behind them. The photo went viral, garnered lots of deserved backlash, and proved that nothing is OK and we are all terrible.

There's no way to sugarcoat this: The Arctic Ocean has chlamydia. The bacteria was found about two miles below the surface, and researchers have no idea why it's there. According to The Cut, "One of the strains they identified appears closely related to the one responsible for burning pee and strange discharge in humans," so that's great. 

And by "great," I mean "decidedly Not Great."

Remember when Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway presented the award for Best Picture at the Oscars in 2017 and they announced that La La Land won, but then it turned out Moonlight was the real winner? And we all sat there in disbelief while the La La Land producers called the Moonlight team up onto the stage and handed them the statues? Yeah, well, this is just about definitive proof that our "reality" is actually a simulation. 

In a 2017 New Yorker article called, "Did the Oscars Just Prove That We Are Living in a Computer Simulation?" Adam Gopnik writes, "Never before has there been an occasion when the entirely wrong movie was given the award, the speeches delivered, and then another movie put in its place. That doesn’t happen. Ever... We are living in the Matrix, and something has gone wrong with the controllers." That about settles that.

So Dr. Phil put his house up for sale a little while ago, and the pictures truly look like they could only exist in a video game. Now, to be fair, Dr. Phil didn't live in this house — his son did. But people everywhere still flipped out because of, oh, I don't know, the vine-covered staircase? The gun room? The nightmare-inducing wall art?

There is so much about this that screams "simulation," most of all the fact that this house belonged to Dr. Phil. Yes, that Dr. Phil. 

The novel coronavirus has reached pandemic levels, and the way that the U.S. is handling it (or, more accurately, not handling it) would be funny if it weren't so dangerous and devastating. 

So many headlines surrounding the story are bonkers. I've watched this video of an NBA player jokingly tapping all the mics after a press conference days before testing positive for the virus so many times. I can't wrap my head around how this is real life. You know why? Because it's not. It's a simulation.

Between this, a coronavirus conference being canceled for coronavirus, kids TikTok-ing while being tested for it, and Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson testing positive, it truly feels like an elaborate prank is being played on us. As comedian Whitney Cummings tweeted, "It’s like it picked the celebrity we cared the most about to make a point." Sure is. Puppet masters, y'all. Puppet. Masters.

In addition to the life-altering coronavirus news  —The NBA? Canceled. Disneyland? Shut down. Employees in offices? Working from home for the foreseeable future — this week also brought us a full moon and a Friday the 13th. 

You can't write this stuff. Seriously, like Kyra wrote, this is bad screenwriting. If I pitched this, no one would buy it. "Too on the nose," they'd say. "Unrealistic!" they'd shout. "Leave my office. NOW," they'd insist.

Not. Now. Bears. Thanks to one of the warmest winters in history, bears are coming out of hibernation early, which is just the cherry on top of this simulated cake we're all unknowingly taking bites of. All we need is hungry bears chasing coronavirus-infected people all over the world. 

Even if we're living in a simulation, climate change is real. And so are bears. At least they are too us. And that's really all that matters.