We Must Create the Shit Machine

A gleefully grotesque satire imagines a tech-industry obsession to build a “Shit Machine” that blasts fecal particles into clouds so they rain down as newly formed shit. The piece skewers the familiar rhetoric of innovation by attributing grandiose, unexplained claims to the device - ending world hunger, curing cancer, solving global warming - while admitting none of the science is understood. Corporate consensus and venture fervor are lampooned through scenes of a “big tech human centipede roundtable,” nationalist paranoia (“China must not obtain the Shit Machine”), and blithe assurances that everyone wants uncontrollable shit-rain.

The satire drills into monetization and moral bankruptcy: an app that points at shit and tells you “that’s shit” (even inaccurately), subscription “Shitbrellas” that won’t fully protect users, a Shit Dam sold separately from a New Zealand bunker, and lengthy disclaimers in the terms of service. By pairing absurd physical hazards with familiar tech tropes - hype, appification, productizing safety, and selling remediation - the piece argues that technological hubris will manufacture disasters and then invoice people to survive them, exposing the industry’s self-serving narratives and comic incapacity for responsibility.