DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC [BLEEP]?

Or: How life is actually (probably) a simulation running in the background of Philip K. Dick’s Tinder profile

Hello! Since I am living in a weird alternate universe between now and the end of January, I’m digging up this previously-published post for your Friday enjoyment. It’s all about dating, Dick, and the end of the world. Enjoy it! Enjoy it again! I’ll be back next Friday with something fresh for ya!

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Philip K. Dick is often – rightly – hailed as a visionary. A madman who, in his psychedelic fugues, visited the future and saw a fractured hellscape where reality was indistinguishable from dreams. A place where you could chew gum and inhabit a fantasy playground while your physical body wasted away. Where you could discover that what you think of as reality is nothing but an inescapable illusion constructed by powerful corporate elites.

In other words: he predicted online dating.

I don’t think he gets nearly enough credit for this.

Yes, Phil got some things wrong. (Flapple, anyone?) But when it comes to the world of dating, it’s like he saw the future, and swiped right.

Let me elaborate.

Do you ever look at someone’s dating profile and wonder… Are you for real?

I mean, sure. Who doesn’t, right?

But do you ever look at your own profile and wonder… Am I real? Am I an android? Am I just a sentient piece of hardware that somehow got caught up in a constructed simulation and is now – without any conscious self-will – driven to take part in a strange psychological game with other players who are likewise driven by complex persuasive technologies to match, chat, flirt, sext and ultimately ghost one another in an endless self-replicating cycle?

I think about that all the time.

This may be why I’m still single.

Or maybe I’m still single because dating apps aren’t making any money off me being coupled up.

Well, no. The real reason I’m single is because I’m a lazy, selfish bitch who doesn’t believe in compromise, commitment, or monogamy.

But what if that’s not the real real reason?

Consider the evidence. Since I started composing this post, the apps are throwing me matches with people who say things like, “Philip K. Dick is my favourite writer.” Really? REALLY? Yesterday, some random asked me about the influences on my writing. One hundred percent that guy was a bot. No real person on Tinder gives a shit about anyone’s influences. (Also, side note: even a bot ought to know that asking about someone’s literary influences is a sure fire way to get their vagina to clamp shut forever.)

It’s left me wondering if the algorithm will soon throw up the ultimate match for me. Middle aged, bearded, stained t-shirt, holding a dog-eared copy of the bible in one hand and a baggie full of amphetamines in the other. Instead of the ubiquitous “I caught a carp” photograph, he holds up a can of Ubik and spray paints a picture of a fish on the wall.

We match. He messages me.

Hi I like your profile you have a lovely smile what kind of things do you write?

He says he’s looking for an iteration of himself inside a fractured nightmare. A familiar face within a self-replicating hell that deepens with every awakening. A safe space inside the chaotic dream in which we have lost ourselves a million times over.

Wait, no way, that’s what I’m looking for too!

He suggests we swap numbers.

He sends me a dick pic. It’s just a photo of his face.

We laugh. Well, we type ‘lol’.

And when I put my phone down, I am filled with a disturbing sense of unreality.

But when I pick up my phone again, there’s only me. Me, fractalling out into infinite other versions of me. Matching, talking, flirting, sexting, ghosting. The circle of life, closed and self-replicating and eternally void.

Wait a minute, you might be saying to yourself. What’s all this talk of void and emptiness? Isn’t this substack supposed to be funny?

Well, okay. You’ve got me there.

But if there is anything funnier than the human race wiping itself out because we’re too good at making pretend people with our phones to want to make actual real babies with our genitals, then I’ve never heard of it.

I mean, yes, the fall of the Roman Empire. And yes, the Aztecs, the Incas, the Babylonians, the Ancient Egyptians. All their empires crumbled and fell apart to the tune of madness, delusion and psychotic extremes. But us, our great civilisation, is going to fall because no one gets to touch anyone else’s genitals anymore. And everyone is so wound up about their own genitals that they refuse to get off their phones long enough to find out that their genitals are perfectly and deliciously gross – just like everyone else’s.

I once wrote a short story in which someone lets off a “kinky bomb” in Asda. This prompts the customers to start rubbing themselves up against the frozen turkeys and getting into naked tangles with shopping trolleys. Of course, that would never happen in real life. Partly because the weapons technology doesn’t exist (as far as we know!) but mainly because, if such a bomb did go off, everyone would immediately rush home to be alone and sext their Tinder dates from the safety of their single beds. Only a few old age pensioners who’d managed to dodge the internet revolution would be getting their tackle out in the canned fish aisle.

Philip K Dick would never have written a story like that, of course. The story he wrote is one in which we are all forever alone, lost deep inside a world of illusion, and absolutely no one is getting their tackle out, not even in Asda.

I’ve sung the praises of online dating often enough, and meant every word. A world of endless opportunity and distraction can’t be all bad, even when you take into account all the lying, ghosting and cheating that goes on. But sometimes I wish that Philip K Dick had got just a little more kinky. If we are merely sentient androids driven by persuasive technology to behave in ways that suit our corporate overlords while we suffer under the delusion that we, despite all the evidence, are actually human, then he could have made it more convincing – and enjoyable – by encouraging us to get our bits out once in a while.

Unsolicited Dick pic