Just started that one, Carol sucks. Enjoying it so far.

That’s just a fan theory, no where in the movie is that established.

psh this dude hasn't used the three shells

No, that’s what the poop knife is for.

The idea of demolition man cannon makes me wish for a demolition man extended universe, hopefully with a crossover with Judge Dredd

gross to read, thank you

3 mysterious sea shells... you think 3 dry sea shells (which most people understand logistically would be impossible to clean yourself properly with) was a stand in for bidets?

I was also around when the movie came out and not a single human i interacted with imagined they were a bidet. In fact bidets were so uncommon in the US at the time that most Americans experience with them was from the movie Crocodile Dundee.

Everyone's problem with the sea shells was that you wouldn't be able to clean yourself properly when you imagine physically using them. But people in the future they imagined have extremely small and limited diets, they probably don't produce an huge amount of waste. There's only 1 fat guy in the whole movie, and you wonder how Otho from Beetlejuice got that way on taco bell protein pellets.

IF they had introduced the concept of a bidet system, it would have immediately removed the mystery from the sea shells and made them far less intimidating.

The anxiety about bidets is leaving the bathroom with a wet spot on my ass.

but all told I'd much rather live in the Demolition Man future than Judge Dredd or Death Race 2000.

But all the dystopian elements is not necessarily the price for the improvements. The message of the movie (to me) was "don't get fooled by some shiny surface when the core is rotten."
And your choice is not between "bad" and "worse". We can imagine even better futures (Star Trek Federation citizenship seems to be pretty neat (if you're not trying to settle some fringe worlds at the cardassian border) for example), so we can work on these.

the guy in charge of it all seems to be determined to secure even more power for himself because of course he’s a sociopath with Mr. Rogers’ speech patterns

If the right people don't have power do you know what happens? The wrong people get it!

but all told I’d much rather live in the Demolition Man future than Judge Dredd or Death Race 2000.

What Pluribus is.

If I had to choose between the two, I rather be in a dystopian system that preserves its dystopia with calm, naive civility rather than armed death squads.

In a similar regard to OP's answer: why do you think that would be your only two choices, between "bad" and "worse"? Why not go another route that's more akin to "good"?

Also I think this is less about specific aspects of dystopia and more about "Don't let the shiny surface blind you towards the rotten core".

Only the first one.