China’s latest “smart” public toilet upgrade has gone viral, and it might be the most dystopian one yet.
Clips circulating across Chinese social media show new dispensers in the country that only release toilet paper if you watch an advertisement or pay a small fee.
In a viral video shared by China Insider, a woman is seen scanning a QR code with her phone and being forced to view an ad before the machine finally spits out a strip of paper.
According to the outlet, users can either watch an ad or pay 0.5 yuan (about $0.07) per strip. Officials claim the system was introduced to reduce waste, claiming that some people had been taking excessive amounts of free toilet paper.
New toilets make users watch ads to get toilet paper
This isn’t the first time China’s bathrooms have made headlines. Back in 2017, facial recognition dispensers were installed at tourist spots, rationing out one 60-centimeter strip per scan every nine minutes.
By 2019, new dispensers extended the wait to ten minutes per person.
Like most ad-based systems, the reaction has been overwhelmingly negative. “I’m walking with my own paper everywhere just in case,” one user wrote. Another remarked, “China is more capitalistic than USA.”
“Ok, this is the first actually dystopian thing I have seen,” someone else said.
Others suggested just watching the ad while doing your business to get some “entertainment” while on the can.
There’s also one pretty big flaw: if someone’s phone is dead or they don’t have spare change, they could have a really gross situation on their hands – literally.
