A “cuil” is a measure of how absurd a situation is.
Let’s get a mundane sentence, then make it progressively more “cuil-y” together!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we talk about “cuil” levels of absurdity in writing.
A “cuil” is a unit of measurement of absurdity that was popularized by a post Reddit, which was then turned into this video:
Basically the more cuils something has, the more absurd it is
So let’s break down the original post, examine each cuil level, then try writing our own!
The Original Post
0 Cuils
If you asked me for a hamburger, and I gave you a hamburger.
– The expected outcome, nothing strange
1 Cuil
If you asked me for a hamburger, and I gave you a raccoon.
– An unexpected outcome that doesn’t make logical sense
2 Cuils
If you asked me for a hamburger, but it turns out I don’t really exist. Where I was originally standing, a picture of a hamburger rests on the ground.
– An unexpected outcome that doesn’t make logical sense
– An illusion/representation of something else (I don’t exist, a picture of a hamburger)3 Cuils
You awake as a hamburger. You start screaming only to have special sauce fly from your lips. The world is in sepia.
– An unexpected outcome that doesn’t make logical sense
– An illusion/representation of something else
– That illusion/representation *is* reality (you really are a hamburger)4 Cuils
Why are we speaking German? A mime cries softly as he cradles a young cow. Your grandfather stares at you as the cow falls apart into patties. You look down only to see me with pickles for eyes, I am singing the song that gives birth to the universe.– An unexpected outcome that doesn’t make logical sense
– An illusion/representation of something else
– That illusion/representation *is* reality
– Existence outside of the universe/time5 Cuils
You ask for a hamburger, I give you a hamburger. You raise it to your lips and take a bite. Your eye twitches involuntarily. Across the street a father of three falls down the stairs. You swallow and look down at the hamburger in your hands. I give you a hamburger. You swallow and look down at the hamburger in your hands. You cannot swallow. There are children at the top of the stairs. A pickle shifts uneasily under the bun. I give you a hamburger. You look at my face, and I am pleading with you. The children are crying now. You raise the hamburger to your lips, tears stream down your face as you take a bite. I give you a hamburger. You are on your knees. You plead with me to go across the street. I hear only children’s laughter. I give you a hamburger. You are screaming as you fall down the stairs. I am your child. You cannot see anything. You take a bite of the hamburger. The concrete rushes up to meet you. You awake with a start in your own bed. Your eye twitches involuntarily. I give you a hamburger. As you kill me, I do not make a sound. I give you a hamburger.– An unexpected outcome that doesn’t make logical sense
– An illusion/representation of something else
– That illusion/representation *is* reality
– Existence outside of the universe/time
– Overlapping realities happening simultaneously6 Cuils
You ask me for a hamburger. My attempt to reciprocate is cut brutally short as my body experiences a sudden lack of electrons. Across a variety of hidden dimensions you are dismayed. John Lennon hands me an apple, but it slips through my fingers. I am reborn as an ocelot. You disapprove. A crack echoes through the universe in defiance of conventional physics as cosmological background noise shifts from randomness to a perfect A Flat. Children everywhere stop what they are doing and hum along in perfect pitch with the background radiation. Birds fall from the sky as the sun engulfs the earth. You hesitate momentarily before allowing yourself to assume the locus of all knowledge. Entropy crumbles as you peruse the information contained within the universe. A small library in Phoenix ceases to exist. You stumble under the weight of everythingness, Your mouth opens up to cry out, and collapses around your body before blinking you out of the spatial plane. You exist only within the fourth dimension. The fountainhead of all knowledge rolls along the ground and collides with a small dog. My head tastes sideways as spacetime is reestablished, you blink back into the corporeal world disoriented, only for me to hand you a hamburger as my body collapses under the strain of reconstitution. The universe has reasserted itself. A particular small dog is fed steak for the rest of its natural life. You die in a freak accident moments later, and your soul works at the returns desk for the Phoenix library. You disapprove. Your disapproval sends ripples through the inter-dimensional void between life and death. A small child begins to cry as he walks toward the stairway where his father stands.– An unexpected outcome that doesn’t make logical sense
– An illusion/representation of something else
– That illusion/representation *is* reality
– Existence outside of the universe/time
– Overlapping realities happening simultaneously
– Physical impossibilities are possible (defying physics, entropy crumbling, tasting sideways)
Essentially each cuil level becomes exponentially more absurd than the last one.
After going over that, we got some random sentences from books to cuil-ify together, and chat voted on their favorite.
They picked this one, from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone:
0-Cuil Sentence:
I haven’t eaten for nearly four hundred years.
Here’s how we cuil-ified it:
1 Cuil: An unexpected outcome that doesn’t make logical sense
Me: I haven’t eaten for nearly four hundred years, and I finally broke my fast on my 11th birthday.
MookieMc: I haven’t eaten for nearly four hundred years and I am a canned ham.
Joe_G89: I haven’t eaten for nearly four hundred years since yesterday.
2 Cuils: An illusion/representation of something else
Me: I haven’t eaten for nearly four hundred years. On my 11th birthday I lit the candles on my cake with a warm memory as it slowly grumbled about the icing flavor.
Joe_G89: I haven’t eaten for nearly 400 years since yesterday, but yesterday never happened. If you look at your calendar, yesterday is covered with mayonnaise.
3 Cuils: That illusion/representation *is* reality
Me: I haven’t eaten for nearly four hundred years. I am a birthday cake, getting my eleven hairs trimmed at the barber to be lit on fire for your birthday. Sometimes he pretends to accidentally slip and dip his thumb into my mayonnaise-flavored icing. Disgusting. I grit my teeth and remember you blowing your wishes at my hair, extinguishing my mind.
Joe_G89: You live as an appetite. You gurgle and spasm at the desperate thought of food. Growling becomes your scream.
4 Cuils: Existence outside of the universe/time
Me: I haven’t eaten for nearly four hundred years. A cake cursed to bake cakes for eternity, shoveling frosting into the hot primordial ovens of freshly-born universes. Memories of the future ripple through the air pores within my spongy shell. A whispered wish, long forgotten. The barber cracks his scissors, and I consume another crying cake before turning another cooled cosmos to OFF.
gameon123321: The long-awaited end is here. It whispers sweet as it spirals into the divide; it will be sugar in its purest form. I am the ouroboros, licking salt from my eyes and savoring the tears hiding within. Grown to a void that begs for hunger; it whispers sweet as the long-awaited end arrives.
5 Cuils: Overlapping realities happening simultaneously
Me: I haven’t eaten for nearly four hundred years. At a birthday party, children shove their Paw Patrol goodie bags into my frosting body in defiance of the chaperones and my tears smear the mayonnaise frosting. You crank their cosmos to OFF. A barber gives a haircut to a young woman, sobbing softly as she watches her beard grow larger and larger. Her twin glares from outside the window, smirking, her wish finally come true. You crank their cosmos to OFF. Finally, the eleven candles are lit, and grandma finally keels over at the kitchen table, her centuries of fasting come to an end. Her family nods solemnly, then begins to scoop out handfuls of her frosting corpse. You crank their cosmos to OFF.
6 Cuils: Physical impossibilities are possible
Me: I haven’t eaten for nearly four hundred years, and neither have you. We ride the waves of spacetime together, rippling as reality laughs at a joke from the Late Night Show with Johnny Carson on August 6, 1988. The barber snips off your compassion. Next door, a child opens up their goodie bag and howls at the ceiling fan before the cake expands to the size of the galaxy and begins making wishes by blowing out suns. You tell me it smells like the number 11. All protons in the universe begin to go on strike demanding better wages, except for the ones belonging to a single possum named Sally. She wonders where she’ll get her hair cut now. At the bake off, one twin trips the other while she’s carrying her cake and it shatters into a thousand Big Bangs. God farts, burps and sneezes at the same time. The clown at the birthday party is making everyone uncomfortable, so the dad divides him by zero and discovers a perpetual energy source wriggling out from his frosting corpse. A single dog barks backwards. All the newly-birthed universes frown at the mess and start to eat each other. Sally goes on a hot date with your grandmother. We both smile at the same warm memory as we crank our cosmos to OFF.
gameon123321: I am hungry. It’s been four hundred years since I’ve last eaten, and my stomach has crystallized into a stone. The stone sits in the bottom of a pool. It takes a personality test, and I am guilty. The unlimited breadsticks taste anemic, skeletons of the one true cake-lord. They wait for their time to fill their brethrens’ place. Release the pink, that ice-like icy eyes butter and cream that tastes like artificial happiness, grind into dust the wheat; we saw the stalks grow into an everlasting future. You tend to it, singing and shouting entropy which motors the second wristwatch. Watch the time, it is four hundred cake-eyes, one for each hunger and each stone and each. This breadstick dreams of personality tests and the missing thing I last ate; it will hope for a day without hunger.
Phew! That’s some good stuff. And it can be helpful to think about when writing our own stories. Even the most normal stories need to dip their toe into 1 or 2 cuil-level descriptions every now and then to stay interesting… but maybe leave the level 4 stuff and beyond for the weird stories.
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
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