I’ve been thinking about Keanu Reeves a lot lately and I know you have, too. Don’t be embarrassed. I mean, I get it—how could you not? He’s everywhere—in think pieces, on daytime talk shows. Appearing in computer-animated franchise installments as cocksure stuntman action figures. Appearing in popular Netflix rom-coms as parodied virile versions of himself. Everywhere you aren’t expecting to find him, there he is. All brooding and bearded, hair coiffed with the perfect amount of gel as to mimic a light sweat (presumably from saving another stranded highway driver.) Tales of his chivalry, generosity, and wisdom abound. Keanu doesn’t touch women when he poses for pictures. He’s been secretly donating millions of dollars to children’s hospitals. There are videos of him rendering Steven Colbert speechless with his musings on the afterlife.
Hot damn.
At first I attributed this spread of Keanu Fever (sounds like it could be something very real and very unpleasant, right?) to some masterful work done by Keanu’s publicist—downing a flight, resurrecting a secret marriage—real ingenious stuff. But, then I started having doubts. The Keanu stories were too genuine, too outlandish. Plus, how did she get him to ponder so eloquently? How did she get his eyes to smolder just so? You can’t teach that kind of magnetism.
So, I switched my thesis—this fascination wasn’t born from some PR scheme. It had been galvanized by a man too-long forgotten by the limelight. An action/sci-fi/bildungsroman-stoner-comedy hero with a staunch moral code and jutting Euro-Asian cheekbones. A man deserving of our collective attention. The overwhelming coverage was merely a byproduct of the internet’s exemplary facilitation of the snowball effect (I realize how this post could be attributing to said effect, but I digress.)
But, then, something else happened, something so perspective-changing, it actually shattered my second thesis.
I was sitting in my car, making the best of a traffic jam by thinking about, of course, Keanu Reeves. And that’s when I turned on the radio to hear—guess what?—the radio host talking about Keanu Reeves. I gulped, my eyes widened, I felt something in my stomach, my skin tingled. It was now blindingly obvious that this convergence of Keanu was more than just happenstance. And that my astonishment had nothing to do with the human tendency to seek order in chaos. No – the universe was trying to tell me something. In ancient times, I may have attributed this type of coincidence to the caprices of the Gods. But, come on, it’s the 21st century and I’m no Luddite.
This synchronicity could only be explained by one thing: simulation theory.
Now before you get all “Elon Musk is going crazy. He doesn’t sleep enough,” hear me out. Although simulation theory was recently popularized by Elon Musk’s The Joe Rogan Experience interview, the guy isn’t just making stuff up. Actually, Musk’s argument mostly echoes a 2003 paper written by Nick Bostrom, a philosophy professor from Oxford. Bostrom basically argues that if humans don’t destroy our entire race before developing the technology for simulation, and if we don’t stop ourselves from pursuing simulation for ethical reasons, then based on the laws of probability, we’re almost definitely living in a simulation. Again, hot damn.
Alright, but how do we know for sure we’re in a simulation? Personally, I prefer to use inductive reasoning based on small, subjective life events to draw more global conclusions and this “if, then” mumbo jumbo isn’t working for me.
Here’s what I suggest—look for the glitches. Naturally, like in any computer game, a simulation will have glitches. Glitches that could cause unthinkable coincidence. Like when someone asks you how you liked the Game of Thrones finale right before you were about to ask them the same thing. Or like when talk of Keanu Reeves comes on the radio, just as you were thinking about him.
Maybe this recent Keanu Fever is actually a major glitch in the fabric of our contrived universe—the software that controls U.S. celebrity coverage has gone haywire! I’m sure there’s a number of futuristic IT personnel on the problem right now, but they obviously haven’t figured it out, because there are no signs of Keanu coverage slowing down.
But, that’s just one theory, a theory that presumes Keanu is merely a side effect of our planned microcosm. What if instead of a side effect, Keanu was actually the genesis of our world? Simulation theory only makes sense if the simulation/s have a purpose. A simulation is meant to test something, say a new technology or a medicine to cure some horrible disease, or maybe even the perfect human. From Frankenstein, to Brave New World, to I’m sure something more recent, futurists have always assumed humans are on some technological quest to create the perfect being, whether it’s through the cut-and-sew method or gene editing (which I guess is just a microscopic cut-and-sew method.)
Well, what if our future society finally created the perfect being and now they’re ready to test? What if all of these “Keanu Reeves is Too Good For This World” posts are actually right because Keanu isn’t of this world? The fact that he actually appeared in an early aughts sci-fi trilogy about a simulation is just a bit of meta humor on the future human/aliens’ part. Haha good one!
So, where do we go with this information? I don’t know. All I can hope is that the visionary puppet master controlling our world from his Gen XXXX Macbook realizes what a bang-up job he’s done. Keanu Reeves is perfect and the world has finally taken notice. Simulation success!
Stay tuned for my next article in which I discuss how the symbolism and literary themes in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure prove the earth is indeed flat.