what if i told you / that the version of history you were taught in school was heavily revised to favor your own nations agenda while hiding its crimes. and in doing so fostered an unrealistic sense of false patriotism used to manufacture your allegiance to a corporate entity masquerading as your government?
A Matrix Morpheus post.
Your dad, 63, discovers the telly can pause live programmes. He pauses the news, walks to the kitchen and back, and unpauses it, looking at you like Neo seeing the code. He has done it eleven times today. A colleague shows you that meeting invites have a "decline" button. It has been there the whole time. You have accepted four hundred meetings. Your personal trainer leans in, very serious, and tells you that paying for the gym doesn't count as going. You pay him 40 pounds an hour for this. What if I told you that you can leave the group chat? You can. It's an option. Nobody ever has. Nobody ever will. **Why it caught on:** it's Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus in The Matrix (1999), offering Neo the red pill or the blue. He never actually says "What if I told you" in the film; the internet wrote it for him, and it makes anything sound profound, especially things that aren't.