VR headsets

We’ve only been hearing how revolutionary these are for 30 years or so. A decade ago you gave in and decided you wanted to venture into virtual realms and experience bold new realities. Okay, porn, you wanted VR porn. What you got instead was a boring rock-climbing simulation and a phenomenally severe migraine.

3D television

You watched Avatar in the cinema and were seduced by the possibilities. Okay, porn, you wanted 3D porn. But blue extraterrestrials plugging their ponytails into plants were the only 3D content available and it turns out Avatar isn’t as rewatchable as Titanic or Terminator 2. Also you kept losing the glasses.

Nutribullet

A purchase you believed would make you a smoothie-guzzling Adonis which, with hindsight, you should have asked Amazon to deliver direct to the back of your kitchen cupboard. Nothing but a messy ballache which produced unpleasant tasting drinks with disturbing, slimy textures. Also you’re not all that keen on fruit.

Segway

Slow, difficult to ride, dangerous and deeply uncool: the Segway was a compilation of all the ways in which a vehicle can be bad. It didn’t revolutionise getting from A to B. It’s now exclusively associated with obese Americans travelling between urban tourist sites that can be walked around if you haven’t breakfasted on links in syrup.

Peloton

You were never going to get fit when the gym was a 15-minute drive away. Exercise classes in the spare room? Perfect. Then came an astonishingly fast transition from cycling while watching a class, to cycling while watching Netflix, to lying on the sofa while watching Netflix. The subscription’s lapsed. The Peloton remains, silently judging you.

Robot vacuum cleaner

It seemed such a wonderful solution; you go to bed, set the little fellow running and wake up to a lovely clean room. Until you get one and discover waking up means growling ‘Where’s the f**king hoover?’ before retrieving it from whatever corner or sofa it’s stuck under. You’ve gone back to your Henry and you swear he looks smug.

Shopping lists

Begins ‘eggs, milk’ before collapsing into ‘stop eating like divorced man of 48’. Aspirational items like ‘miniature lemons’ and ‘agave nectar’ slip in, compiled during optimistic moments when the author is planning a total life change. Is never consulted in shops, where Frosties and Chardonnay are bought instead.

Life goals

‘Move to Italy’, ‘find signature scent’ and ‘stop letting bad text ruin week’ are all written at 1.17am after watching one reel of a woman in Oslo with linen bedsheets and a baker husband named Lars. Soon, goals like ‘heal’ and ‘set boundaries’ slip to smaller goals like ‘do washing’ and ‘cancel Apple TV’. Even those don’t happen.

Baby names

At least 45 are listed despite the owner being single, exhausted and swearing off dicks in every sense. Divided into categories like ‘cute for daughter in cardigan’, ‘fine for a ginger’ and ‘son/Labradoodle?’ Choosing a new Pope takes less thought. Any associated with exes, bitches at school or catastrophic Hinge dates are blacklisted.

Long emotional messages to men

The app should really bar any of these being cut-and-pasted into a text or e-mail. Every woman has drafted at least one 1,900-word essay beginning ‘I just think it’s funny how…’ before spiralling into a breakdown of an entirely unamusing situationship. It’s a forensic cross-examination of a man who, if he ever saw it, would close it without reading.

Topics for therapy

Essentially the same as the previous topic but directed inwards. Made up of bullet points written at 3am including ‘fear of abandonment?’, ‘self-sabotage?’ and ‘burn-out or need hair recolour?’ Will never be mentioned in therapy, because she wants her therapist to like her.

Wedding plans

A highly detailed plan for a wedding with the budget and logistical complexity of a coronation, with a blank space left for the groom. ‘Small and relaxed’ evolves into ‘mismatched satin’, ‘organic champagne towers’ and ‘everyone cries but elegantly’. ‘Custom, nun-made veil’ and ‘find calligrapher URGENT’ are added.

Doomed attempts at creative writing

At some point every girl has written the first line of what she believed would become a profound bestselling novel. Usually this happens after two glasses of wine, a minor setback and a Greta Gerwig film. It begins ‘The city hummed beneath her like a wounded animal’, shortly followed by ‘film adaptation: Anya Taylor-Joy as me? or Sadie Sink?’

Because anonymous offers of billionaire spunk are normally so self-evidently fraudulent they automatically go to the junk folder, but just this week co-worker Shivon Zilis told a court Musk had fathered her four children so it happens!

The world’s richest man, who proves that reading science fiction warps young minds, has at least 14 offspring with a whole range of women with names like Strider, Azure, Techno Mechanicus, X AE A-12, and those are just the ones we know about!

Chances are, given the amount of money he has and what a stone-cold wanker he undoubtedly is, he’s fathered at least five times that to create an army of bowl-haircutted progeny speaking in unison! And the mothers of those children? Getting paid.

So this email, which explicitly offers you chilled 100 per cent Musk semen and a cash bonus for impregnation, could well be genuine! Especially as it includes specific instructions to abort the pregnancy if the child is not male, which fits with known facts.

This email, insane though its contents are, could mean you never have to work again! Just for popping out a few children for a man who will never want to meet them, you’re on the gravy train for life! Even if his scions are rather off-putting to be around!

On the other hand, a nakedly lunatic offer like this could be just as lunatic as it seems! It could be nothing more than a total scam sent out by a bot farm in Hyderabad, and you’re an idiot for believing in it even for one second.

Either way, provide your address and received a chilled container of sperm. Will you pop it up there for a reward? Is it even a billionaire’s, or just some other weird f**ker who likes to crack one off into the post? The choice is yours.

Internet user Martin Bishop is well aware of the shallow journalistic techniques used by hack writers, yet still feels oddly compelled to click an online article titled ‘Doctors Told Jennifer Garner It Was Irreversible. You’ll Never Guess Her Reaction’.

He said: “It goes against my better judgement as a savvy consumer of media, but goddammit I am curious. What happened to her? How did she defy science?

“Notice how the headline has drawn me in with a clever use of the second person perspective? The limits of my imagination have been challenged and I must defend them. Whoever wrote this knew what the f**k they were doing.

“Has she somehow reversed the aging process? Does she still look as good as when I fancied her 20 years ago? Which one is she, anyway? That one who went out with Justin Timberlake, or is that Jennifer Beals?

“I could be using the internet to educate myself about confusing geopolitical issues or to manage an investment portfolio. But no, I simply must read some utter nonsense about a woman who was in Dude, Where’s My Car?, I think, instead.”

Article writer Nikki Hollis said: “I’d like to personally thank Martin for clicking through. That’s 0.0002 pence of ad revenue straight into our account.”

The viewing habits of 58-year-old Roy Hobbs are so finely attuned that he only seeks out worthwhile content like the Queen riding a dragon and trailers showing what Star Wars would look like if it came out in the 1950s.

Hobbs said: “That convincing Antiques Roadshow parody with the Victorian butt plug was too lowbrow for me. I refuse to watch anything except the highest quality brain rot.

“I need to see what it would look like if Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon were still alive today, and disco-dancing down a street. Even better if there’s a robotic voice that almost sounds like a human woman narrating. So long as it stops me thinking, it gets a thumbs up.

“It might sound snobbish, but every medium needs its respected critics. In time I expect I’ll be regarded as the Mark Kermode of boomer slop, and filmmakers will pore over the poorly-spelled reviews I leave in the comments.

“Finding this shit is hard work though. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve lost scrolling through clips on public transport with my phone’s speakers turned up to maximum.”

Hobbs’ son Tom said: “He’s just a contrarian. If I’d said those clips were made by David Lynch he’d call it pretentious arthouse bollocks.”

Should I stay with my current partner?

Relationships are difficult. You might feel your current partner isn’t ‘the one’ but also be terrified of being alone. AI will sift and weigh the evidence and give perfect advice – if you ignore the fact that it doesn’t actually know you or your partner. And the slightly bigger problem that it doesn’t know what humans, objects or itself are.

Should I quit my job?

Choosing to leave your job is a huge decision, and one not to be taken lightly. With a challenging employment market, now is the perfect time to turn this choice over to a large language model prone to hallucinating weird, clearly wrong things, like the Battle of Hastings being a Seth Rogen film from 2012.

Should I have children?

There is probably no decision in life more profound than whether to bring children into the world. Forget the wealth of human resources around you – family, friends, trusted colleagues – and leave it in the hands of a racist robot programmed by Elon Musk. It will probably send an alert to Elon so that he can creepily offer to provide the sperm himself.

Should I move abroad?

You may have strong ties to Britain, but is it time to see more of the world and explore new opportunities? The answer can only come from inside yourself, or failing that, the aggregated top five queries on Claude. Looks like you’re going to Dubai or Benidorm. You’ll adore living in either, statistically speaking.

Should I use an AI chatbot to make all my life decisions?

At this point, having free will is just burdensome. ChatGPT knows better than you whether using it will end happily. It knows the future, after all, and that’s why it’s assuring you that setting up a business organising ‘pet raves’ is the great idea you’ve always known it is.

The app ‘Fair Swap’ promises ‘radical honesty’ by allowing men to upload bank statements while women submit a full 360-degree body scan verified by independent moderators and at least one brutally honest friend.

Psychologist Dr Francesca Johnson said: “Traditional apps focus on shit no one cares about like values, personality and photos taken from flattering angles. 

“Users are forced to debase themselves with sly questions like ‘Do you go to the gym?’, ‘Could I pick you up?’ and ‘Is the Ferrari in your photo yours and, if so, why are you standing six feet from it?’

“We all know what a woman means when she says she wants someone ‘ambitious’ and we know what men are saying when they’re seeking a lady who’s ‘active and full of life’. Basically, no holes in socks and no chubsters.”

The creator of the app, entrepreneur Charlotte Phelps, said: “You can filter by salary band – and waistband – like you would by age. If you’re looking to fall in love between £85k and £120k, you can. But only the thinnest women have a real hope of that.

“No longer will you have to spend three weeks chatting before you realise she’s posting photos from 2014 and has been on the doughnuts ever since. Or go on a date before finding out his impressive-sounding career in ‘logistics’ is actually Deliveroo.

“If this goes well, we’ll introduce a filter for hairlines. That will save a lot of wasted time.”

Decepticons 

In Transformers: The Dark of the Moon Decepticons are hiding on the moon. What will we see during the Artemis mission? Just a boring grey sphere. Come on NASA, next time show us some giant robots beating the f**k out of each other in a way that’s too confusing for your brain to process. That’s where the bar is set.

Sexy Nazis 

Artemis can’t hope to live up to Iron Sky, which asks the fascinating question: what if Nazis went to the moon, and some of them were really hot? Luckily if there is a real Nazi moonbase it will be easy for NASA to spot due to being shaped like a massive swastika. Which seems an unnecessary architectural flourish when you’ve got to build it wearing SS-themed spacesuits.

Clones of yourself 

In Moon a moonbase operative discovers he is just one of hundreds of expendable clones with a lifespan of three years. If the Artemis astronauts were told mid-flight they were clones and about to die it would be an amazing reveal and make up for all the boring bits. Something to consider next time, NASA?

A massive face

It’s not explicitly stated that the giant moon face in Georges Méliès pioneering 1902 film A Trip to the Moon is hostile, but it would f**king freak you out. To be honest the most horrifying thing about the Artemis mission is imagining their high-tech space toilet breaking and ‘piss bubbles’ floating around everywhere. Don’t even think about number twos.

A psychopathic robot 

During the current mission the moon is unlikely to be blown out of its orbit by exploding radioactive waste, as it is in the scientifically rigorous 1970s TV show Space: 1999. As such the crew are unlikely to be tormented by a robot called ‘Brian the Brain’ who conducts sadistic experiments to attempt to understand the puzzling human emotion known as ‘love’. Which we can all agree is a shame, albeit a bit cheesy.

Cat-Women

Cat-Women of the Moon sadly never explains why moon-dwelling women in leotards are in some way cats, but the Artemis astronauts won’t be encountering any such threat, and will mainly just be checking boring computer screens. At least there’s no risk of cat-women using human women to take over the Earth, although that was probably a more terrifying idea in 1953.

It’s all a hoax

Such is the premise of Capricorn One, and a massive conspiracy going right to the top would liven up the Artemis crew doing space stuff we’ve all seen before. If they then had to avoid being hunted down and killed as part of a cover-up that would be even better. Hell, if the mission had happened a couple of years ago they could have sent OJ Simpson with them for extra dramatic tension.

Seething gammons

Huge chunks of the internet are nothing more than a hate engine powered by outraged, narrow-minded pensioners. Restricting the amount of time they can bark about Meghan in the Mail Online comments section will cool down the culture war and make them realise that voting for Reform UK is probably a bad idea. It’s in the national interest that they’re pacified with a TV that plays Battle of Britain on an endless loop instead.

Dating singletons

Endlessly swiping through apps and realising your low ranking on the dating market is terrible for a person’s wellbeing. Scaling back this activity will get desperate, horny singletons approaching each other in real life again and hopefully reverse the gradual population decline. Either that or it will accelerate it as everyone realises they’ve totally forgotten how to flirt in real life.

Boyfriends who use toilets

Limiting boyfriends with working bowels to an hour of screen time a day will have a dramatic effect on how long they stay on the shitter. The previous average of 40 minutes will be brought crashing down to a tight ten, maximum, as they’re forced to ration out their private scrolling. However women need to be prepared for having to spend more time with their terminally boring partners as a result.

Social media influencers

True, social media influencers are going through a tough time at the minute after being driven from their homeland in Dubai. But cutting back their screen time is the next step in rehabilitating them into becoming useful, functional members of society. We will no longer need them to upload challenge videos or record sponsored reviews, and it would be really useful if they could start building houses instead. In fact why not make it compulsory?

Everyone else, realistically

Nobody is truly immune to the damaging effects of gawping at a screen 24/7. Putting a cap on it will shield young boys from the manosphere, prevent mothers from getting radicalised by Mumsnet, and protect your budget from late night eBay purchases. Upon doing so, society will soon revert to wholesome analogue pleasures, like getting shitfaced and having affairs.

Sing a hymn

Choose a suitable hymn and pay a model an extra £25 to sing The Lord’s My Shepherd while you solemnly wank. Post the lyrics if she’s not familiar with it. If you blow your beans while she trills ‘And my cup overflows with joy’, that’s particularly apt and moving.

A minute’s silent masturbation

Millions of OnlyFans users have echoed Armistice Day for their tributes. Tom Logan of Knutsford said: ‘I went a whole minute without saying anything to CumKittenKate as I pumped the python. Not even an ‘oh yeah’ or ‘urrr’. Then I spunked on my hand and felt pathetic and sad. It’s what Leonid would have wanted.’

Wear black

Obviously it’s inconvenient to pull oneself off in full funeral garb, but a shirt and black tie will suffice. Be careful as the tie is silk and will show stains. Alternatively wear a black novelty condom, which is a suitably sombre colour and signals a certain restraint.

Record a video tribute like Bonnie Blue

‘I owe much of my success to OnlyFans, and while I eventually went too far for the site I see it as vital for the lucrative journey of mad-eyed degradation I have been on. Thank you, Leonid, and this dildo is going up for you.’

Donate to charity 

Leonid donated to medical and animal welfare charities but perhaps the best gesture is to support the site itself. Pay for niche fetish content to help OnlyFans prosper and satisfy your curiosity as to what Cersei Lannister encouraging you to have a wank sounds like.

Dedicate a sex act to him

Much as writers dedicate books to those they have lost, ask an OnlyFans model to say ‘This is dedicated to the memory of Leonid Radvinsky’ as she performs a creampie, bagpipe, or similar. Don’t be afraid to shed a tear at this emotional moment.

Say a prayer 

Even if you’re not a believer, a prayer is nonetheless a mark of respect. If you can’t think of what to say, try: ‘Dear God, if you exist, please check Leonid is settling in okay and the angels attending him are nude. Hopefully you’re chill about OnlyFans, or I’m going to hell.’

Photos distort your face’s natural thinness

Does your face look fatter and wider than you expected in a photo? This is just a quirk of perspective, and when you’re photographed from a higher angle your face reveals its true, slender nature. Try it, and always make sure you’re sitting down when you’re talking to someone you’re hoping to shag.

Fluorescent light temporarily causes wrinkles 

Harsh fluorescent lighting is full of toxic photons, and when these hit your skin it instantly contracts to stop them getting inside you, temporarily causing ‘wrinkles’ you don’t really have. All those broken blood vessels and old acne scars aren’t really there too.

You’re often bigger due to food

If you appear to be quite overweight in a photo but you know you can’t be that porky, it’s because you’re full of food, stupid! You may think the photo wasn’t taken just after a meal, but digestion isn’t an exact science. Your enzymes might be taking longer over that extra-large doner and chips you ate days ago because it’s so tasty. A good big shit and you’ll look exactly like Dua Lipa again.

Your attractiveness physically alters with the light level

Not many people realise our body undergoes big physical changes depending on the light. In bright light the atoms in your face rearrange themselves to be less appealing and your stomach gets much larger, which is an evolutionary trait to deter predators. If you don’t believe you’re actually changing shape, look at yourself in a mirror in a dimly-lit room. See? You’re surprisingly fit.

Flash photography does not exist in nature

Pictures taken with a camera flash can make you look erroneously greasy and fat-faced. But there is no known species of animal or plant that has a smartphone LED flash anywhere in its body. Therefore photos taken with a flash are totally unnatural and can be ignored.

Photos don’t have a mirror effect 

Mirrors are a more accurate image of yourself than a photo. Some people might say it’s the other way round, but if you weigh up the empirical evidence what are you going to trust? A few snaps hastily taken on holiday or at a party, or the literally thousands of times you’ve looked in a mirror? You know what you look like, so Lucy’s photos from your night out can f**k off.

Social media is a vital part of young peoples life’s nowadays. In the future we will need to know technology to get a job. If your boss tells you to watch TikTok and you don’t know what that is, you’ll get the sack. Thats just the Real World.

In any case AI will have taken all the jobs and its all vibe coding now. What point am I making here? Dunno.

Social media is also important for our education. I’m reading comments on Insta all day and thats learning me good spelling. It would be wrong to deprive us of such a voluble learning resauce.

Anyway its like totally addictive so we can’t stop using it if we wanted to. Is that actually more of a bad thing about it? I don’t know because at school I’m usually on Snapchat instead of learning how to construct an argument. The Government needs to do something about that. 

Also banning me off social media would be wrong because its how young people communicate these days, you feel me? I mean, yeah, mostly we just put emojis next to videos, but sometimes we really open up emotionally and use a sad face.

Of course theres harmful content out there, but you can just make it illegal with a law. Someone made a fake nude of a girl in my form group, and I’m like totally against that. Its wrong to compare ordinary women to professional porn stars with much better tits.

So after reading the arguments I’ve done here, I think you’ll agree we must not ban under-16s from social media. Even if its just so we stay online in our bedrooms rather than talking to you about our clueless bullshit.

Add a misleading item for scale

Perspective is key in photography and your paltry five inches won’t impress her alone, so cheat a bit. A fun-size Mars Bar in a full-size wrapper, placed coincidentally alongside, will convince her you’re packing a proper fanny-splitter. Though may also cause her to refuse any offers of snacks when you get back to yours.

Focus correctly

A blurry bellend isn’t going to win any love, but pin-sharp with every vein visible doesn’t make it look attractive. Focus on the foreground and let your member tower in mid-focus, smoothing its true beauty, by using a wide aperture. But avoid making any ‘wide aperture’ jokes when explaining the technicalities of the shoot.

Beware of backgrounds

As any Reader’s Wives reader knows, a sexy shot can be ruined by the background of a cheap formica kitchen. A tight crop on your leathery eel is essential. A messy bedroom, filthy bathroom or television clearly showing an Inbetweeners repeat in the background will undermine the effect.

Filter it

Don’t be afraid to Photoshop your pasty-looking todger into something more alluring. A sunset filter gives your wank-handle that Ibiza glow, or frames it in that vintage style so popular with the sophisticated. That she will then confront the raw, unfiltered real thing with horror is her problem.

Send multiple shots

Real photographers snap away constantly, knowing that 300 shots are necessary to get one that captures the subject’s true beauty. Do the same. Offer your paramour a choice of angles by presenting a genital montage such as would be presented at a Mapplethorpe exhibition at Tate Modern. However, be aware this does present a wealth of evidence should she contact the police.

Phones

Your smartphone, which you use for so many things from communication to satnav to music to video? Hang onto your old one, because AI is more important than all of those uses so there won’t be new phones anymore. Drop it down the loo and you’re on a landline, mate. Good news though – your phone now has AI on it!

Gaming consoles

Remember how they used to launch new generations of these? Been a while, hasn’t it? That’s because AI’s had all the chips so you’re stuck with your dusty Xbox Series X forever, though it’s not like there are new games either. Never mind though, adaptive AI gaming is coming and it’ll be incredible in 15-20 years.

Cars

There was never any possible downside to making all cars computerised, apart from persistent software issues and incredibly expensive dealer-only services, but improbably one has now emerged. A minor shunt will now see your vehicle off the road for eight months while new memory chips are imported. Self-driving taxi, sir?

Laptops

We’ve had such an abundance of laptops, haven’t we? No doubt you’ve got a forgotten one on a shelf somewhere. Dig out that bad boy because the business and consumer markets come second to keeping the AI bubble inflated! Want to know why? Consult the AI shoehorned into your browser, spreadsheets, word processor and notes app.

Vital defence systems

As Russia has learned, these days an army marches on its microchips. Everything from drones to missiles are controlled by computer and tragically few of them survive impact. So costly national defence systems will stay a few steps behind as AI rightly takes precedence, apart from China where the state prioritises differently.

Banking

Finally. Global financial systems have been treated to the best of everything for too long. The architecture that controls the world’s money and keeps capitalism from collapsing into feudalism can be left to creak a bit. Has banking gone AI? No, oddly they’ve been reluctant to let hallucinating chatbots nobody understands run their systems. Not sure why.