I find the Matrix/simulation theory astonishingly stupid, and I genuinely do not understand why its central contradiction is not obvious to more people.
What surprises me even more is how many supposed Prison Planet exponents proclaim it: David Icke, Isabella Greene, Tony Sayers, Huzefa and many others. Courtney Brown and Brett Stuart, at least, do not seem to need the Matrix explanation. They describe an actual control architecture involving real consciousness, real non-human actors and real post-death machinery.
If the controllers can generate the world, body, personality, memories and every sensory experience as software, then almost the entire Prison Planet system becomes pointless. They would not need biological confinement, trauma, propaganda, social conditioning, assigned astrological traits, deception, death interception, memory wipes or reincarnation.
They could simply change the code.
Yet Matrix believers take every sign of elaborate indirect control as evidence for a system possessing unlimited direct control. That is completely backwards.
Manipulation is necessary only because the prisoner cannot simply be programmed. A memory wipe is necessary only because real memories remain. An assigned personality interface is necessary only because consciousness itself cannot be rewritten. Death interception is necessary only because the soul could otherwise leave.
The Matrix makes every one of these mechanisms redundant.
I think “simulation” has become a fashionable escape word. It sounds technical, but it removes the need to explain anything. Every anomaly is “coded,” and every contradiction is dismissed because “the simulation can do anything.”
A theory capable of explaining absolutely anything explains nothing.
People also confuse three completely different claims:
Reality may have an informational structure.
Human perception is heavily filtered.
The entire universe is an artificial computer simulation.
The first two do not remotely prove the third.
The coherent model is a real consciousness trapped inside a real biological and post-death control system. The body restricts it because the soul cannot be programmed. Trauma, authority and conditioning steer it because its choices cannot simply be authored. Memory is erased because knowledge would expose the system. The soul is intercepted because it remains independent.
That is a prison.
The Matrix is a fashionable add-on that makes nearly the whole Prison Planet architecture unnecessary. Why so many Prison Planet commentators fail to see this is beyond me.

Birdie Jowarsky (arguably the best remote viewer on the planet) just did a recent video that kind of rejects simulation theory. It's probably not as cut and dry as "true vs false" but there's growing reason to believe that the prison we live in is a real prison, real people living on a real planet held captive. Not in a "pod" being fed an illusion.

@Gewo:

"I think 'simulation' has become a fashionable escape word."

This.

When the muggles use the word "simulation", they don't mean simulation. They mean what they saw in the Matrix movies, and then believe the nonsense that the entire universe is not real.

Even in the movies, the universe is real. The Matrix was just a simulation of 20th century Earth, fed into the brains of real people by hijacking the senses of the brain. It works because people don't know that in reality, they are more than their bodies.

Even the movies show it: Neo was able to use his powers in the real world, when he stopped the sentinels. Most people conclude from this scene that the real world must be another simulation. And in doing so, they totally miss the point that the movies wanted to teach us something about reality.