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MOVIES POP CULTURE

We Are Living
Inside the Matrix
and the Rapper
Pitbull Is the Proof
What if Cypher got his wish to be rich
and famous, and became the rapper
Pitbull and we are all living in a
simulation? Just asking!
BY JASON CONCEPCION AUG 11, 2017, 1:36PM EDT
Getty Images/Warner Bros./Ringer illustration

T
his feeling has been weighing on
me for a while. An unreal,
unsettled sensation that paints
the familiar in strange light. Am I awake
or am I dreaming? Its hard to know.
Sometimes the feeling lasts only a
moment a chill passing through my
body on a hot day. Other times it crests
and holds, and then fades slowly. Like
when a roomful of people explodes into
raucous conversation for no discernible
reason. My favorite coee mug feeling
lighter than usual. The correct spelling
of a word I use a million times a day
looking inexplicably wrong on my
computer screen, the cursor blinking
accusingly just to the right.

In these moments, forgotten memories

bubble up so vividly exquisite sunlight
through the classroom windows
glistening against the downy hairs on my
crushs left arm as she blackens the
bubbles on a Scantron form with the
green no. 2 pencil I lent her the week
before. Its as if they were placed there
just so by some wizened cosmic
architect. Are they even mine?

Logging onto the internet these days

feels like staring into a sandblaster of the
absurd. Last summer, on Facebook, one
of my oldest, dearest friends outed
himself as an ardent Trump supporter.
He believes, among other things, that
giving women the right to vote
weakened the social fabric of the
country. He and his wife, also a close
friend, have two daughters.

A chunk of ice the size of Delaware (or, as

The Guardian put it, twice the size of
Luxembourg; PS congratulations,
Delaware) recently came unmoored from
the increasingly imperiled Antarctic ice
shelf; the animals (according to a recent
study) are dying; there was that thing at
the Oscars; dogs apparently hate hugs;
Donald Trump is the fucking president.
The world has turned darkly upside
down. How did this happen?

There are two ways to approach that

question the right and the wrong. The
wrong way would be to examine the
philosophies, histories, and global forces
that delivered us rampant inequality and
the wanton destruction of the earth.
That leads nowhere. The right way is to
pursue truth by studying the 1999 sci-
action epic The Matrix. Thats where the
answers are. Because thats where we are.
We live in the fucking Matrix. And I can
prove it.

T
he Matrix, which is popularly
regarded as a science-ction lm,
is, in fact, part documentary, part
Machine false-ag operation. It was
released in the year commonly thought
of as 1999. It tells the story of a solitary
hacker named Neo, who realizes his
destiny is to deliver humanity from the
vast virtual prison where a race of
oppressive machines uses us as batteries.
This is not a work of ction.
Neo is abetted by a rash collection of
heroes: the wise Morpheus, who awakens
Neo from his digital slumber; the ercely
beautiful Trinity, whose love gives Neo a
reason to believe; the energetic young
Mouse; the ice-blonde Switch and black-
haired Apoc, of whom we know very
little; the Earth-born duo Tank and
Dozer; and, lastly, Cypher, who yearns
for the Matrixs virtual comforts,
ultimately betraying Neo and Morpheus.

Midway through the lm, Cypher

meets with the Agents, the elite virtual
security force, inside a restaurant in the
Matrix. There, over a digital
reproduction of a blood-red steak,
Cypher agrees to sell out Morpheus in
return for a life of ease, wealth, and
celebrity inside the simulation.

Agent Smith and Cypher

I dont want to remember nothing,

Cypher tells Agent Smith. Nothing, you
understand? And I want to be rich.
Someone important. Like an actor.

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Whatever you want, Mr. Reagan, Smith

says.
Later, still inside the Matrix, Cypher
gives away the location of Morpheus and
crew. Morpheus is taken prisoner.
Mouse, Switch, Apoc, and Dozer are
killed. Cypher slips into the real world.
He kills Tank with an energy weapon and
is about to kill Neo when hes brought
down by Dozer. But what if thats just
what the Machines want us to think?
What if the Machines actually
triumphed? What if Cyphers deal
actually was: slipping back into the
simulation, where we all live, to take up
his life as a rich and famous celebrity?
The Matrix was released in 1999. Two
years later, in Miami, a then-unknown
rapper named Pitbull began his strange
and mysterious rise to international
prominence.
Pitbull is Cypher. Cypher is Pitbull. And
we live in the Matrix. This explains
everything.
Pitbull was born Armando Christian
Perez in Miami in 1981. Thats if we
assume that Pitbull, Miami, Florida, the
United States of America, and the year
1981 AD are all the people, places, and
concepts that we think they are. Thats if
we assume the world we live in is real,
not a simulacrum designed to keep us
docile while our bodies are harvested for
energy. Could such a thing be possible?

Theres a one-in-billions chance that

this is base reality, said Elon Musk when
asked about the possibility that we live in
the Matrix at Recodes Code Conference
 AD

2016. In English, that means that Musk

thinks its likely, though not by a lot, that
were right now living inside a simulation
instead of real life. And hes not alone.
Noted astrophysicist and fun-ruiner Neil
deGrasse Tyson puts the odds at a coin
ip that we live in the Matrix.

The strongest argument for us being in

a simulation is the following: Forty years
ago, we had Pong. Like, two rectangles
and a dot. That was what games were,
Musk explained at Code Conference.
Forty years later we have photo-
realistic, 3-D simulations, with millions
of people playing simultaneously, and its
getting better every year. If you assume
any rate of improvement at all, then the
game will become indistinguishable
from reality.
The world is shit, but dont worry. Its
also fake.

M
y theory, which is true and real,
goes like this:

The rst half of The Matrix

depicts the last phase of the human-
Machine war as it actually happened:
Morpheus and the crew of the
Nebuchadnezzar freeing Neo from the
simulation and their attempts to wake
the human race from its slumber. The
second half, after Ciphers death, is
Machine disinformation meant to keep
us placid by delivering a classic
Hollywood ending.

What actually happened is this: Cypher

betrayed Morpheus. The Machines
triumphed, Morpheus was captured, and
Neo, Trinity, and the rest were killed.
The Machines honored their deal, erased
Cyphers memories, and placed him back
inside the Matrix. But not the actual one;
the Machines created a Pocket Matrix,
just for Cypher. Remember, the Matrix
relies on choice in order to remain
stable. As the Architect told Neo, the
rst iterations of the simulation were
utopias that didnt involve choice.
Human minds rejected them, causing
the Matrix to crash. The bargain the
Machines struck with Cypher was to
reinsert him under a set of specic
parameters that applied only to him
wealth, fame, importance that amount
to, essentially, a personal utopia. Thus
the Pocket Matrix; the Machines
couldnt risk infecting the wider system.

But you want proof. OK. First, the

timeline. Pitbull makes his recording
debut in 2001, not long after the debut
of The Matrix. His vast fame and success
 Bud Light ads; a write-up in Vanity
Fair; appearances on The View;
numerous hits that no one admits to
liking (except maybe Timber); getting
away with tucking his Marlins jersey into
his pants; potentially joining an
ownership group with Jeb Bush to buy
the Marlins from the execrable Jerey
Loria; his own Sirius Radio channel is
inexplicable. Unless you accept that he is
Cypher and we live in his personal
simulation.

This is why our world is such a mess. Not

because of ancient racial animus or
 AD

because people are susceptible to appeals

to naked nationalism or because liberal
democracy is under siege by aggressive
foreign powers or because wealth has
been concentrated in the hands of the
few. Its because we live in an unstable
version of the Matrix that was designed
to fulll the desires and dreams of only
one man Cypher-Pitbull.

There are clues in Pitbulls music. I asked

noted rap historian, best-selling author,
documentarian, and Ringer sta writer
Shea Serrano (these terms, by the way,
are all constructs of the pocket Matrix)
to look at the lyrics to the biggest hits
Pitbull has been involved with.

Timber (featuring Ke$ha)

The bigger they are, the harder they fall

This biggity boys a diggity dog
I have em like Miley Cyrus, clothes o
Twerking in their bras and thongs, timber
Face down, booty up, timber
Thats the way we like the what, timber
Im slicker than an oil spill
She say she wont, but I bet she will,
timber

Look up in the sky, its a bird, its a plane

Nah, its just me, aint a damn thing
changed
Live in hotels, swing on plane
Blessed to say, money aint a thing
Club jumping like LeBron, now, Voli
Order me another round, homie
We about to climb, wild, cause its about
to go down

Shea: The main thing here is hes

advocating for Big Oil. He conrms it in
the second verse when he talks about
having a lot of money (Big Oil $$$, it
would seem) and thats probably why he
has to have sex on that airplane (because
Big Oil is destroying the earth so the elite
have taken to the skies like in that Matt
Damon movie). Thats what all the its
going down talk is about.
Its notable that the album this track
comes from is titled Global Warming:
Meltdown.

Time of Our Lives (featuring NeYo)

This is the last $20 I got
But Imma have a good time ballin or out
Tell the bartender line up some shots
Cause Imma get loose tonight
Shes on re, shes so hot
Im no liar, she burn up the spot
Look like Mariah, I took another shot
Told her drop, drop, drop, drop it like its
hot
Dirty talk, dirty dance
She a freaky girl and Im a freaky man
She on the rebound, broke up with her ex
And Im like Rodman, ready on deck
I told her I wanna ride out, and she said
yes
We didnt go to church, but I got blessed

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Shea: You know what hes doing in this
one? Hes propagating the idea that
reckless spending among the poverty-
stricken is a good thing. AND! Even
more oensive, hes doing so by
pretending to be poor himself. He raps
about how hes down to his last $20. The
song came out in 2014. That same year
Pitbull had a net worth of over $11
million. Its shameful that he would
pretend to be poor and then advocate
blowing what little money you have. Its a
common strategy among the rich: you
have to keep the disenfranchised
disenfranchised.
Notable, again, that the album this track
appears on is titled Globalization. Pitbull
is Cypher. Cypher is the Illuminati. We
live in his world. Gaze upon the truth
and despair.

O
nce you realize that the Pocket
Matrix wasnt built with you in
mind, the world makes a lot more
sense. Still, mysteries remain. Why does
The Matrix exist inside the Pitbull
Pocket Matrix in the rst place? Does it
exist in the wider Matrix? And when we
think of the movie The Matrix, are the
people we imagine inside of it aware that
theyre not real? Does a cloud darken
their faces when they glimpse imaginary
Pitbull, with imaginary Marlins jersey
tucked into imaginary white slacks,
rapping:

I dont play baseball but Ive hit a home

run everywhere, everywhere.
Ive been to countries and cities I cant
pronounce
And the places on the globe I didnt know
existed.
In Romania she pulled me to the side and
told me, Pit, you can have me and my
sister.
In Lebanon, yeah, the women are bomb
And in Greece youve guessed it the
women are sweet.
Been all around the world but I aint gon
lietheres nothing like Miamis heat.

Has Pitbull even seen The Matrix?

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