Maybe I Shouldn’t Have Ditched That Bullshit Detector

I do not have a bullshit detector. I used to have one, but I don’t even know where it is anymore—maybe out in the garage. It was an awkward thing, like one of those little roll-aboard briefcases, but made of bright-orange high-impact plastic, and it didn’t work very well. It was O.K. on ordinary, everyday bullshit, but it could not detect cant. It was also not too reliable on sanctimony or pomposity, and only so-so on hypocrisy. Supposedly, it could puncture self-importance, but I could never get that feature to turn on. Over all, the detector was more trouble than it was worth, so I quit using it.

I read recently about someone who had a “built-in” bullshit detector! I am completely unable to picture how that might work, but, then, I would not be the person to ask. Kids, I’m told, have built-in bullshit detectors, so maybe you need to be young. Like a lot of older consumers, I have not kept up on the technology.

Living without a bullshit detector can be peaceful and relaxing. As you know, there is a lot of bullshit out there, and I got sick of having the alarm go off all the time. On the other hand, I do feel a need for the ol’ detector occasionally.

The other day, I was at Ikea (as we call it) with my wife when we had a disagreement. We had been there for a while, looking for a piece of furniture for our living room. As I waited for her to make up her mind about one chair or the other, I checked my phone and saw that I had received a solicitation from something called the Flat-Ikea Society. For some reason, I clicked on it. The Flat-Ikea Society is made up of people who believe, in defiance of science and logic, that Ikea is flat. Now, everyone knows that Ikea is round. We take that for granted. But, rather than dismiss the group as crazy, I read on to see what it had to say.

According to these folks, Ikea is a huge flat thing surrounded on all sides by asphalt. If you continue far enough in Ikea, they say, you will go through a sort of portal, and then fall off the edge, or curb, of Ikea. You will then find yourself on a vast asphalt sea, where, they believe, there are monstrous S.U.V.s, many of them a spectral white, along with white and other-colored vans and enormous trucks with rubbery, finlike mud flaps. This asphalt sea rests, in turn, on the back of a giant turtle, or tortoise, that they have named the Planet. This turtle, or whatever, is a being of which they have only the fuzziest notion—so fuzzy, in fact, that they don’t even concern themselves about it.

My wife scoffed when I told her of my e-mail discovery. She wouldn’t even hear me out when I argued that this flat-Ikea theory made at least as much sense as the so-called settled science that tells us Ikea is round. I asked her, “How do we actually know that Ikea is round?” She said that, obviously, we know it’s round because if we walk in any direction in Ikea eventually we will end up back at the point where we began. She pointed to Ikea’s famous meatballs, which are round. If Ikea were flat, the meatballs would be flat, too, like sausage patties. And then there are the familiar pictures of Ikea—the beautiful shots that the astronauts took from space.

Later, in the Ikea parking lot, I wondered, Could this be the “vast asphalt sea” that the flat-Ikea people were talking about? In fact, there were a lot of white S.U.V.s, vans, and enormous trucks, just as in the description. If only I’d been able to crank up the bullshit detector then! Ask it about flat-Ikea-ism, let it shoot down this weird theory once and for all, and I could peaceably yield to the conventional wisdom.

Here is where things get strange.

We loaded the large, flat box containing our new, yet-to-be-assembled living-room chair into the back of the car and began to head home. I was driving. As we exited the Ikea parking lot, the car gradually began to turn upside down. You know that tortoiseshell stuff they make eyeglass frames out of? That is what the road we were now driving on seemed to be made of, as our seat belts kept us from falling and hitting our heads on the ceiling of the car. I can’t explain any of it—I’m just telling you what I think I experienced.

I don’t judge anybody. If you want to believe that Ikea is flat, fine with me. But just remember that if you think you can save a few bucks by going without a bullshit detector, your cheapness will catch up with you eventually. ♦