Tastes like real gum!

Oggy grew up with digital entertainment. His father would take he and his brother to Pizza Hut (when Pizza Hut was hardly the giant chain it is today) and they would order root beer and a pan pizza and while it was being cooked Oggy would get .50 to play a game called Space Invaders. The game was the earliest of console video games and you had to sit at it. Oggy would even put his root beer on the table top even though a sign said he shouldn't. It was a cocktail console and Oggy thought it was the best thing he'd ever seen. This, thought Oggy, was a world he understood. The aliens marched closer to the shields and gunship and you killed them. The aliens gradually moved faster and even dropped missiles on your gunship. What fun! After two games the pizza would be ready and Oggy would sit with his brother and his father and eat. That was living.

Much like the alien invaders, Oggy gradually moved faster and faster and played every arcade game that was released. When Oggy wasn't playing baseball he was at the local mall arcade playing video games. So Oggy understands the attraction to video games. But the possibility that someone would videotape Oggy playing video games and then WATCH him play the video game is crazy. This level of fantasy is simply too much for Oggy to grasp. It's one thing to watch space invaders attack your ship, but to watch someone on a computer who is watching space invaders attack his ship is too strange.

This reminds Oggy of a commercial that he either saw or imagined he saw (it's hard to tell anymore). The commercial was for gum that helped you quit smoking. Maybe there was nicotine in the gum. Anyway, the commercial said, "Tastes like real gum!"
Really?
Tastes like real gum?
Oggy isn't sure this actually happened because it's so insane. Tastes like real gum. IS it possible someone thinks gum is a real substance? Or has Gum existed for so long that it is now considered on a par with an apple or banana? So when you eat gum, that's the REAL thing. And when you buy this nicotine gum you will be pleased to find that it tastes like real gum. It tastes like the gum you are used to eating? I don't understand. Whether nicotine or raspberry or chocolate flavored there is no such thing as real gum. It's completely artificial. The very nature of gum is that it's artificial. So if they add nicotine to gum then it's simply nicotine gum. It's not "fake" gum. Gum is fake. Or is it? Oggy can not separate real from fake anymore. It's like watching someone kill space invaders. It looks just like real space invaders. It's meta-life. It's an artificial activity that has existed for so long that now we can just watch that artificial activity and it is just the same as if we were actually engaged in the artificial activity. It tastes like real gum. Oggy didn't do much today but what he did was watch other people do things that are no longer necessary to do, thus he did just as much as them. He didn't waste time. He watched someone else waste time.
Oggy doesn't know. Maybe he doesn't want to eat something that tastes like real gum. Maybe Oggy want the real gum.