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A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
A still from the movie Demolition Man in which some police officers prepare to confront a character played by Wesley Snipes.
Top Text: Demolition Man: A movie which depicts a horrifying dystopia...
Bottom Text:...in which food is too healthy, bidets are common, and cops literally don't know how to assault a black man.
3 mysterious sea shells... you think 3 dry sea shells (which most people understand logistically would be impossible to clean yourself properly with) was a stand in for bidets?
I was also around when the movie came out and not a single human i interacted with imagined they were a bidet. In fact bidets were so uncommon in the US at the time that most Americans experience with them was from the movie Crocodile Dundee.
Everyone's problem with the sea shells was that you wouldn't be able to clean yourself properly when you imagine physically using them. But people in the future they imagined have extremely small and limited diets, they probably don't produce an huge amount of waste. There's only 1 fat guy in the whole movie, and you wonder how Otho from Beetlejuice got that way on taco bell protein pellets.
IF they had introduced the concept of a bidet system, it would have immediately removed the mystery from the sea shells and made them far less intimidating.
That's... not the joke. Holy shit have people over-thought the three shells. It's not supposed to make sense or have a physical utility that you can imagine. THAT IS THE JOKE.
User above was kind of right that it reflected an anxiety about change to personal habits for "environmentalism" and other things that were happening at the time like people pushing for saving water in the bathroom.
The joke is mystery, like duh, the conversations about how to use it were relevant. No human in the US had anxiety over bidets. When conversations about the sea shells were had, they involved the physical use of them specifically.
Bidets weren't in the zeitgeist. When people engage with the sea shells (the literal and exact intention of the sea shells was to wonder how you use them), they thought about how they would physically replace toilet paper. The scene literally shows you the main character generating paper to use.
Like it's crazy I even have to note this, when you hear hoofbeats in Wyoming, you don't wonder if zebra are making them.