Blog Post 1: The Gorilla vs. Fiction Debate

I am a listener of the podcast "Where Do We Begin?", a comedy podcast that talks about a variety of topics, featuring people from the streaming group Radio TV Solutions (known for "Half-Life VR But the AI is Self-Aware" and "Spamton Value Network.") I highly recommend listening to it, this podcast has literally almost killed people with wood chippers with how funny it is. In the 38th episode, Geoff Keighley VS The Gorilla, at timestamp 1:02:57, Wayne reads a Reddit post that prompts a lengthy discussion:

[ID: A Reddit post by a deleted user to the r/whowouldwin subreddit, posted in 2022. The post title is, "A gorilla who is immune to all weapons VS Fiction." The post body is as follows: "Now I don't mean the gorilla is fighting every single fictional character, that'd be silly. Instead he has a radar of where every piece of fiction is at and must destroy all of it. Rules: 1. He has a radar that tracks everything; 2. He must destroy every physical piece of fiction in the world; 3. He ignores humans but will kill them if needed; 4. Humanity doesn't know that he's destroying fiction or his weakness; 5. He only has to destroy every piece of current fiction, stuff made after he starts his rampage don't count; 6. The ONLY thing that can AFFECT him is an alive human limb; 7. If he can manage to destroy all physical media, he must then try to destroy every single internet server in the world. Can he solo fiction?" End ID.]

Now there is a LOT to unpack in this post, mostly because a lot of the established rules are very vague and up for interpretation. So I will analyze each rule individually to share my interpretation and decide whether or not the gorilla can succeed in destroying all fiction.

1. A radar that tracks everything; Perhaps the most vague rule. What is this radar supposed to be? Is it an external device that the gorilla can hold, or is it built into his brain and can only be destroyed by killing the gorilla? If it is an external device, can it even be destroyed? And how will it "track everything"? Does it track only the fictional media he must destroy, or can it literally track anything the gorilla wants? I choose to believe that this radar is built into the gorilla's head, and the radar is able to track anything the gorilla chooses. The gorilla also has human intelligence and comprehension to be able to use the radar. For instance, if the gorilla wants to cross a large ocean, the gorilla could use his radar to calculate water currents that could carry him across to another continent, or perhaps find out optimal boat routes to get across easier. Note that nothing can hurt the gorilla except for human touch. More on that later...

2. He must destroy every physical piece of fiction in the world; Of course the first thing that comes to mind is books, even comic books. That is obvious that this gorilla may target libraries and other places with many books. But consider that there are also forms of fictional media, including CDs and cassettes with movies and TV shows on them. There is merchandise of fictional media, including shirts, pants, and figurines. So would the gorilla see Mario on a little kid's shirt and tear apart the kid just to destroy the Mario shirt? There's also entire theme parks based on fictional media. Would he have to destroy every Disney park?? I'm not sure the scale of what he must destroy, but I do know it should be fiction "in the world," in other words, ON EARTH. It would be impossible for the gorilla to get to other planets with intelligent life that are lightyears away, let alone get to the Voyager probes that are only a few billion miles away.

3. He ignores humans but will kill them if needed; Seems pretty self-explanatory. He could go into a library and start ripping apart all the books, he wouldn't go after the humans directly. But if people attempted to stop him from destroying the books, the gorilla would begin killing the people that specifically tried to hold him back / protect the books. This situation can apply to other situations of people protecting things that the gorilla is targeting. Moving on...

4. Humanity doesn't know that he's destroying fiction or his weakness; Imagine this realisitcally now. People just going about their day, suddenly they see a gorilla running through the city, they find him in the library destroying all the books. This quickly gets attention of international news outlets, reports of this same gorilla on the run going across the country destroying all this media. Police and eventually military gets involved, they arrive to the scene with planes, tanks, and other automobiles (weapons too). They attack the gorilla with all they got, but they realize the gorilla isn't being weakened at all, so they don't know what to do. More on this later...

5. He only has to destroy every piece of current fiction, stuff made after he starts his rampage don't count; Let's say he starts at midnight on 25 December 2024, this means that anything like a show's Christmas special released on Christmas day 2024 would not be targeted by the gorilla. Very simple to understand. Moving on...

6. The ONLY thing that can AFFECT him is an alive human limb; Wording on this is a little weird, but it's simple. You can essentially punch him, kick him in the nuts, you can grab his dick and twist it if you want, and he will feel Pain. And while the title of the original Reddit post says the gorilla is "immune to all weapons" I choose to believe that this means the gorilla is immune to Literally Anything that can kill or weaken a living thing. So the gorilla can't get killed by natural elements, or by aging, so theoretically he has infinite time to complete his task! But humans can still affect him with direct contact... how would this fact be found out? Perhaps at one point, after all the military weapons have been tried, some crazy person (or people) will just go "Fuck it" and attack the gorilla with bare hands, and people will notice that the gorilla is actually affected by it. Then perhaps giant groups of people could mobilize to attack the gorilla at once and possibly weaken it? I've brought up the Gorilla Vs. Fiction debate in a Discord server I'm in, and like two people suggested getting large buff people to attack the gorilla or kill it by overheating it with body heat, like bugs sometimes do. So perhaps they could succeed in their mission? in killing the gorilla? I do not know...

7. If he can manage to destroy all physical media, he must then try to destroy every single internet server in the world; This would probably be an easier task, since the definition of "all physical media" can be very broad and cover a wide range of things (as established when discussing the second rule). Meanwhile it is easy to know what an Internet server is; if it is a computer than supports the wider Internet / can power a website, it is an internet server. And, given how many internet servers are often together in one place, this should make the task much more simple for the gorilla.

And now, the ultimate question. Can The Gorilla Solo All Of Fiction? My answer is... YES. Consider: Have a large group of people ever killed a single gorilla with their bare hands? I don't think that has ever happened. Maybe people have killed a gorilla with, like, tranquilizer guns and knives and other hand weapons, but remember that this gorilla cannot be hurt by any of that. Only with bare human flesh. And people may stop after sending the toughest people in existence and very few of them return alive. So I don't think people will be able to stop the gorilla, even since he has infinite time because he can't be weakened by age. However, I am re-listening to the Where Do We Begin podcast episode, and they do mention that long human nails could cause the gorilla to bleed out, and how the gorilla having infinite time and high intelligence could make him wait for all of humanity to die out and then resume his rampage of fiction. So I am having a few doubts about my "yes" answer, but I am still mostly confident in the gorilla's quest. So yes, a gorilla can destroy all physical media of fiction.

Thank you for reading my thoughts and interpretations on a shitty Reddit theoretical that was introduced to me through a comedy podcast. Future blog posts will probably not be like this one lmfao. But who knows...