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this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2026
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Leopards Ate My Face
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Yeah, for a character like that, sure.
But, I mean, if 'everything I wanted' included a library of good books, I think I'd be happy for a few years at least.
Watch the episode, it's a lot more clear than listening to a one line summary.
Imagine if every book you picked up had the exact story you were thinking of. There would be zero surprise, zero imagination in the writing. You wouldn't learn anything because it's only what you expect.
Now you want some food, it's the most intensely rich, perfect food you want. But the exact same of your favorite food every time. No variation, no imperfections.
You go to play a video game and you win with no effort having only clicked the absolute minimum needed to solve every step of the way.
That's what the story is about.
On the surface, it seems like it would be great, and maybe it would be for an afternoon, but very quickly it would become a nightmare.
So, what if I wanted to read The Lord of the Rings trilogy? Plenty of actually existing books out there I could ask for as part of 'everything I wanted'. And the content of those books shouldn't change. If they did, then those wouldn't be the books I wanted. And if I get tired of the books I'm already familiar with, well, I sure could add 'a list of all books in my old local library' as a thing I want, and then I know a bunch more books to ask for.
And what kind of 3rd-rate dystopia is this if 'everything I wanted' can't include a specific book I asked for?
Only one kind of food? That's not 'everything I wanted' -- I already want more than one type of food, and I haven't even had my 'perfect' food yet!
No imperfections is fine, but 'everything I wanted' will have to include quite a bit of variation, because I want variety.
Video games I'll give you, I guess. In this kind of world, video games might be so easy they're boring ... even if I asked for a specific, already-existing game, there would still never be any challenge in beating it because I just magically play it perfectly every time.
But, hey, lots of boredom-abolishing entertainment out there that doesn't require audience participation the way video games do. Not just books, but movies, TV shows, art, maybe even stage plays, the works. Pretty sure I could keep myself amused for decades at least, given free access to all of that. There's no way to 'instantly win' reading a book or watching a TV show. The experience of it will have to be pretty much the same as it is now ... except that I've got literally all the time in the world for it, and no barriers to access. Ooh -- you know what? I think I'll start with the lost Doctor Who episodes, the ones that have never been seen since they first aired decades ago. That should be interesting.
Honestly, seems to be trying too hard to make this scenario sound awful when, really, it could be pretty great for someone with a bit of imagination.
Yep. The afterlife is tailored to the individual. If you're a sinner when you die, the books will probably all be missing their second half.
The Twilight Zone ironically has its own infamous suggestion for what Hell looks like for an avid reader.
Probably. This is something I thought a lot about when considering "Heaven" and its eternity: you eventually know everything there is to know about anything you could possibly interested in, and you eventually have all the conversations you could have. But this version of Hell makes it "worse" (not technically, because any finite time against eternity is infinitesimal, but you get the point).
If you've ever read the fairytale "The Magic Thread", you know what the problem is. Namely that you could learn the contents of any book in an instant. You could skip any boring chapter you wanted and still be able to recite it word for word. Any boring paragraph even. Boring sentence. You could know everything there ever was to know in a nanosecond. There's nothing stopping you, and you don't even have to wish for it aloud or anything.
Pretty much inevitably, a human will start to optimize the fun out of reading, because they'll be a little bit bored and skip to the exciting part with all the requisite knowledge. Without material barriers, this will keep snowballing.
And, of course, probably one of the few things you can't do is just reset yourself to forget, since that goes against the torture.