Have you ever had a dream that you were so sure
was real? What if you couldn't awaken? How would you know the difference between dream
and reality- a reality where you've pissed off the one, Neo of The Matrix,
and now you've earned yourself a 1 on 1 deathmatch in a simulated copy of late 1990s America.
We've had your back on this show in a variety of scenarios, but now you've basically went and
gotten yourself into a fight with someone who is for all intents and purposes, a living god.
With the ability to shape reality and bend or break the matrix program at will, you're going
to have your hands absolutely full, so let's jump straight into a crash course on getting you up to
the task of taking down Neo- and we think we have a killer strategy the Wachowskis never saw coming.
Alright, first things first, for those of you with terrible taste in movies
or for our three viewers in North Korea, who is Neo?
An ordinary guy, Neo was identified early on by Morpheus, the kinda-sorta-leader of a
human resistance movement, as 'the one', an individual prophesized to free mankind from
the yoke of machine tyranny. See in the real world sometime near the end of the 21st century, mankind
developed intelligent machines. These machines gradually grew sentient even as humanity basically
treated them like slaves while they themselves lounged around living lives of extreme luxury.
One day, a household robot known as B1-66ER learned that he was going to be scrapped and
replaced with a newer model, so he killed his human owners. With public pressure mounting
to recognize machine intelligence, B1 was granted a trial, during which he defended
himself saying that his killing was an act of self defense because he did not wish to die.
He'd lose his court case and be destroyed anyways, but the trial kicked off a global
movement for machine civil rights. Despite the protests being peaceful, governments around the
world cracked down with harsh measures, even killing both machines and human supporters.
With fears of global rebellion looming, intelligent machines were hunted down and
destroyed all over the world, ending with the exodus of the surviving machines to a city in
the deserts of Mesopotamia named 01. In time 01 became a prosperous city-state, and with machine
intelligence growing exponentially faster than human intelligence, 01's technology soon outpaced
humanity's technology. 01's incredible efficiency also made them an economic and industrial power
house, and soon the world was overwhelmingly dependent on 01's goods and services.
A fearful humanity called an emergency UN summit to discuss the issue, and 01 sent
two delegates to propose 01's entry into the UN and plans to become a global contributor.
The proposal was met with fear and paranoia, and within days the United Nations initiated
a pre-emptive nuclear strike against 01. The machines, prepared for just such an eventuality,
and much better able to withstand nuclear war than a human society,
quickly rebounded and began fighting back. Eventually humanity was driven to the desperate
act of darkening the skies with nanobots in order to deny the machines their energy source: the sun.
Even though, you know, the machines could've totally just built nuclear power plants and
powered themselves with batteries making blocking out the sun pretty much the stupidest idea in
history. Listen, we're not saying The Matrix wasn't awesome when it came out in the 90s,
we're just saying that the Wachowskis lore is a little.. well, silly.
Once the sky was darkened the machines pretty much just turned to the literally dozens of alternative
energy sources available to them and long story short, humanity lost. Now it was the machine's
turn to make a monumentally stupid decision, and they decided that they would stick humans in bio
pods and leech them for the energy the human body created in order to power themselves,
despite the average human generating less electricity than a 9 volt battery.
Now hold on, because we're finally getting to Neo.
1% of humans plugged into The Matrix would inevitably reject it,
kind of like how no matter how good the new Call of Duty is someone is inevitably going
to whine about it on their Twitch stream. These rejections would accumulate bugs over time and
threaten to bring down the entire Matrix, because apparently the machines failed to learn from
literally every single MMO ever created and have 1 hour of server downtime every week for a reset.
In order to prevent the matrix from crashing and killing all humans,
and thus cutting off the machines from their really inefficient energy source,
the machines allowed one human to eventually rise up and become 'the one'.
The one would be a human who rejected the matrix and would learn some mastery over it,
inevitably being put on a path designed by the machines to meet with the Architect. The Architect
would reveal the truth to the one, and tell him that he had two choices to make: sacrifice himself
and allow the matrix to basically reload, or let the matrix crash and kill everyone inside of it.
Seriously, like one single hour of downtime a week for a server reset is all the machines
needed to do, but without all this rigmarole we wouldn't have the best kung fu movie of the 1990s.
Neo would prove to not be like the other 'ones' though, and chose to
save the woman he loved rather than literally everyone else left alive on earth. Somehow,
and the plot plays real fast and loose with this one, Neo managed to leave the matrix without it
exploding from server errors and control machines attacking the last human city with brain wi-fi.
He would then take a ship to meet with what was basically the leader of the machines,
an entity named Deus Ex Machina, because the Wachowskis are about as subtle as a sledgehammer
and literally needed a deus ex machina plot device to save their rapidly sinking plot.
Neo struck a deal with the machines- he would save the matrix from Agent Smith
and the machines would declare a truce between themselves and the freed human survivors. Neo
then hopped into battle with Agent Smith, who had gone renegade and become a virus
infecting the machine's servers, and did the job even the most basic version of Norton
anti-virus could do and eliminated Smith from the machine's servers.
Neo saved the day for both man and machine and the two lived happily ever after forever. Just
kidding, both sides started a war again literally just years later.
But none of that matters, because we've still got the simple matter of teaching you to defeat Neo.
This isn't going to be an easy job. In the real world, Neo is your average early 30s,
slightly malnourished from living an underground post-apocalyptic lifestyle guy. But inside the
matrix, he's basically a god because- again, the machines never figured out how to have a
weekly server reset. Neo is basically running every cheat bot available, and while Activision
can slam bans on cheating players today, the machine somehow never learned how to do the same.
He's super strong, super fast, and super tough. Oh, and he can fly and
come back from the dead. He's basically a simulated superman, except he can have
any power that he wants that's within the limits of the matrix's code. So in theory,
he can bend the rules of the matrix but not outright break them. For example, yes, he can fly,
because the matrix allows individuals to move in three dimensions- he's simply changing the
line of code that says can-humans-fly from a 0 to a 1. He can also be super strong at will, because
once more the matrix attempts to accurately implement real life physics so that the simulation
is believable to the greatest number of people, switching his simulated strength value from that
of an average male to say that of a monster truck 500 horsepower engine is simple enough.
What he might not be able to do- and we say might because honestly nobody is really sure-
is do things that outright break the rules of the simulated reality entirely. This list however is
vanishingly small, because in truth there's always a clever way to give yourself an ability in the
matrix that would be considered breaking the rules of the world. And this is your key to victory.
For instance, why doesn't Neo shoot fireballs out of his eyes? Sure, that would completely violate
the realism setting on the matrix, but projectile weapons are well established as functioning inside
this simulated reality- so hacking the code in a way that the matrix sees your eyes as
projectile weapons capable of launching bursts of superheated plasma is so simple that even
the most basic modder could do it. We know, because when X Com 2 first came out in 2016
literally the first mod dropped for the game was one that changed your weapon into a Corgi.
Want more examples of how changes like these are possible with even the most
basic modding knowledge? How about Fallout 4, a great game that nonetheless falls short
of Fallout New Vegas? What if babies in this game exploded with the power of mini-nukes,
or more specifically, what if your nuke launcher shot out your own child,
a baby shaun that exploded with the power of a small star?
What we're getting at here is that the matrix is highly moddable, and yet
Neo has never chosen to truly explore the possibilities. So since he shows no interest
in exploring the more obviously insane and awesome ways Neo could abuse the matrix,
you can show him the error of his ways. Why not mod yourself so every time you
blinked you created a hurricane made of razor blades? Or even better, made it so
when you punched your fingernails flew off and became city-destroying Cloverfield monsters?
The point we're trying to make is that the sky is literally the limit here,
even though Neo shows absolutely no interest in reaching these heights
of ridiculous epic that you routinely see on literally any Nexus Mods top 50 search.
But the key to doing all this is to master the power Neo wields so efficiently- actually being
able to mod the matrix on the fly. And all that really requires is for you to believe.
That's right, you don't need to have a masters degree in computer biology or network chemistry
or... alright, listen, the extent of computer knowledge here at the infographics show is
basically wiggle the mouse to bring it out of sleep mode and launch League of Legends so we
can get screamed at by 12 year olds who called AD carry even before the game lobby loaded.
It's not ranked bro, if we want to lane with Warwick we will and you need to chill.
Sorry, as we were saying, you don't need to understand how to program to hack the
matrix, you just need to believe things are and that's how they are. And the first
step to believing is to realize that you're living in a simulated reality,
which if you're fighting Neo you should already be aware of. However, it's more insidious than that,
because you're so programmed to be a sheeple that you're probably doing dumb things like breathing.
Stop walking around like a normie and start realizing that you don't need to do like half
the things you do- including get tired or feel pain. Why should you be tired when you run? You
aren't actually exerting any physical energy, and you need to realize and believe that fact.
Likewise, why should you feel any pain? You're not really getting hit, and your body isn't
really getting damaged. We're even told in the movies that the reason people die in the matrix
is because they believe what the program is telling them- game over, man, time to expire.
Once you've mastered these basics, the world is literally your sandbox. So how do you beat Neo
at his own game? By out-clevering him with the way you modify the matrix around you.
It's time to give yourself those superpowers you've always been dreaming of.
Why not make yourself 300 times the size, and when Neo comes buzzing around like a little fly,
you exterminate that fly with with the most obvious weapon of choice...
An electric fly swatter. One swipe with one of these bad boys and Neo will be Matrix dust.
Now go watch You vs Thanos, or click on this other video instead.