Forget Mars (for now), Elon Musk, it’s time we disrupted pooping
By Dr Parikshit Dixit
Dr Roshi Bagheera quote of the day: Darkness comes with coldness but coldness does not always come with darkness.
Let’s face it, the Earth sucks. And the only guy to save us from this whole mess is Amber Heard’s ex-boyfriend Elon Musk. Even as we speak, the man is trying to colonise Mars so we don’t have to be here when the planet is destroyed and there’s no option for the remaining people other than to eat each other to survive. Our parcels reach us too slowly, even with Prime, so he’s building hi-speed tubes and because we spend too much time travelling he’s created a company that will build tunnels beneath our cities until Mars is finally ready for us to move in, and the rent deposit is paid up, and the brokerage has been deducted from our accounts.That’s not all. Because we are stupid, the guy’s developing a device which will turn our brains into computers. Phew!
Other commentators have written about Silicon Valley’s attempt to give us cool things but not improve our lives so I will not focus on that, although what I will talk about is in line with that idea. Amongst all this disruption, there’s one part of our life that needs to be radically altered, perhaps enough to ensure that it never exists, that no one has to ever partake of its ignominies , and it’s not being talked about enough— pooping.
We spend too much time evicting waste from our bodies. On an average, we live for around 60–70 years. One year of that time is spent on the pot, emitting solids, gases and liquids. That’s not accounting for the amount of time you have to plan your time so you will not feel the need to attend to a nature’s call when there isn’t a toilet around or will be forced to use a public toilet, which let’s face it, even in the best of nations is shitty. Worse still is the amount of time we spend trying to ensure that all this waste disappears into the ether, as if it were never here in the first place.
And to be honest, no one likes pooping. I mean how could you or even why would you. Yes, yes, people say they like the quiet of the toilet and that few minutes a day is very relaxing. But that’s got nothing to do with the act, everything to do with the surrounding. So I am not saying take away the toilet. If you come to actually think of it, you would love to sit in a toilet without any purpose. Imagine a part of your life that is completely organic that has no ulterior motive. You’re in the toilet because you want to be there, for a moment’s respite, and not to complete some job or excel at some task. It’s the stuff dreams are made of.
That brings me to the larger point of the human body. It’s poorly designed. It dies. It wears out to easily. It looks strange. It fails us. And it is sorely in need of disruption. But that’s too big a task. I believe in baby steps. Well begun is half done. We need to take one small step for man, yada yada yada.
So Elon Musk, I call on you to disrupt pooping before you do anything else. It will save time and money and it’s good for you. Your employees will have more time to work on all of your other ideas. It’s a win-win. In case you don’t have any ideas as of now, I have some for you, don’t worry.
- Find a way to monetise it
The best way to kill anything is to monetise it and ask advertisers to come into the picture. It will absolutely destroy the pooping experience. That’s what happened to movies. The internet. And Quinoa. And avocados.
2. Tell people its unhealthy, and then speed up evolution.
Here I’ll make it easy for you. I recently funded a study, which basically does half your job for you. A study conducted by my childhood friend Dr Zach Quack has discovered that gluten-free poop, organic poop is no poop at all. That’s all you need to get people to stop doing it. Now they’ll go to great lengths to prevent it from happening. There will be challenges on social media, promoted by influencers you don’t need to hire or pay. Ordinarily, we will have to wait a million years, give or take, after this point for evolution to take its course. We need to shorten the time frame to say 30 minutes, because that’s how long an average sitcom episode takes and it’s how long most people can wait. I’m leaving that upto you.
3. Eliminate the digestive system and make it digital.
It’s easy. Develop an app that takes care of the whole situation for you. It happens on its own, once you installed it, it takes care of everything. How it will work and all that jazz is for you to figure out. I’m an ideas man.
Go ahead, do it, Mr Musk. I believe in you.
Dr Parikshit Dixit holds a doctorate in fecal anthropology. He was part of the team that developed Poo Pourri. Before that he worked several years cleaning toilets around the city of Mumbai as part of his field research. Trust him, it was not fun. But a PhD’s gotta do what a PhD’s got to do. He is currently working on a book, Pooping, what’s it good for? Absolutely nothing.
Research for this article was funded by the International Centre of Truly Important Things. A version of this article first appeared in the Journal of Oblong Objects.