If This World Was a Simulation, What a Shitty Movie That Would Be

The simulation hypothesis has made a comeback recently — are we living in a simulation? — however, the more you think about it, the worse it gets as a concept.

If this world was a simulation, what a shitty movie that would be. The concept is so egotistical. A simulation just for you? You are not that worthy.

It’s a pretty self-important idea when you think about it. The entire universe — billions of galaxies, 13.8 billion years of history, unfathomable complexity — exists as a backdrop for you to figure out whether to text your ex back.

The simulation hypothesis inherits the same problem as a lot of anthropocentric thinking: it quietly assumes humans (or this particular human) are the point of the whole thing. But if it’s a simulation, why would the simulators care about us specifically? We might just be an unintended side effect, like mold growing in someone’s abandoned terrarium.

The “shitty movie” critique is also underrated. The pacing alone — 4 billion years of single-celled organisms before anything interesting happens? Terrible writing. The protagonist barely has any agency, the side characters mostly suffer for no narrative reason, and it just… ends. No resolution. A studio would never greenlight this surely?

The more interesting version of the simulation idea isn’t “someone made this for us” but the colder one — that we might be something like an accidental process running on infrastructure that doesn’t know or care we exist. Which is like materialism with extra steps.

So What Do the Movies Say?

It’s been done to virtual death. The concept has been explored in film from every angle:

The Obvious Ones

• The Matrix (1999) — the most iconic take. Humans unknowingly living in a simulated reality controlled by machines.
• The Thirteenth Floor (1999) — came out the same year as The Matrix, surprisingly underrated. Literally about nested simulations.
• Dark City (1998) — aliens construct and manipulate a fake city/reality around humans.

More Abstract Takes

• Inception (2010) — simulated realities within dreams, layers of constructed experience.
• eXistenZ (1999) — Cronenberg’s weird, fleshy version. Game simulations indistinguishable from reality.
• Vanilla Sky (2001) — life as a lucid dream simulation you’ve paid for.

The Egotistical Version (A Simulation Just for You)

• The Truman Show (1998) — probably the purest version of this critique. One guy, entire fake world built around him.
• Westworld (the show, not the movie) — flips it by making the simulated beings the interesting ones.

The Nihilistic/Accidental Version

• Coherence (2013) — reality forking and becoming unstable.
• Annihilation — reality as something indifferent and alien.

1999 was a wild year for this concept. Something in the cultural water right before Y2K.

Recent Ones

• Bliss (2021) — Owen Wilson plays a guy down on his luck who meets a mysterious homeless woman (Salma Hayek) who tells him that, like her, he’s “real” while everyone else isn’t.
• Free Guy (2021) — Ryan Reynolds plays an NPC who becomes self-aware inside a video game and sets out to be a hero by saving his city from destruction at the hands of the game designers.
• The Matrix Resurrections (2021) — see above.
• A Glitch in the Matrix (2021) — documentary. Filmmaker Rodney Ascher tackles the question through testimony, philosophy and science. Odd and unsettling.

Aliens are not watching you.  They are not watching Dreamcatcher either, what a waste of time that was.

You see in a simulation, they would find better ways to use their time.  And the way we are, this simulation over and reset so much that it fell apart and never happened.  Stuck with the remnants of it at best. So are you in a simulation? No…. not yet. Maybe we’re getting inspired to build one just for you though.