I’ve been gripped by the idea of hyperreality. The first time I came across this term was in 2004 during my undergraduate studies. At the time, it seemed simple enough to comprehend. Our perspective of the world is shaped by the media. The way we perceive our surroundings, is an indistinguishable mediated experience. Jean Bauldrillad posited that hyperreality captures the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality. Thus, the way to free our minds, was to recognise the mediated intervention, and if necessary, separate yourself from the opiate of the masses. Oh Baudrillard, you would have been proud of me, for I have remained free.

Simple right?

Well, 2004 was when Web 2.0 was just starting out. One of the pioneer technologies and ideas then was the concept of self-publishing, which I still participate in today. In fact, many of us have spent the last two decades in a constant state of self-publishing, or being exposed to self-publishing. I myself have negotiated with self-publishing these past twenty years as an attempt to continue exercising my individual independence of thought.

In those two decades, I dare say that self-publishing has taken over as our defacto understanding of the world. If the world before Web2 was to negotiate with our surroundings based on medium and the message, then it would be akin to “This is the World”. After Web2, this changed has to “This is MY world”. And it’s through these individualised accounts of self-expression in the last two decades, where an unprecedented amount of humans participated in this exercise of self-expression, that we arrive at the post-truth status quo.

And like an invisible parasite that latched itself into our psyche, that we no longer believe in anything we cannot experience for ourselves. If we do not experience it, if we do not express it, then it is not real.

And that’s the bit about hyperreality that gripped me.

After all these years, I was wrong. Hyperreality is not something that you can avoid if can separate the medium, message, sign and signifier. I think if I were to re-read Bauldrillard’s text, then he was saying that we are already in a state of hyperreality. Hyperreality exists in the perspective, and now it is everywhere. Any idea of the truth has now been forever lost, because they only truth that matters is what you consider to be true. This is the hyperreality of the 21st century.

I am currently not physically with my family. But they are a text message away. In fact, a message from my sister just got delivered to my mobile phone. It’s almost as if she were in the room next to me, but she’s not. It is astounding how through years of conditioning, that we are connecting over text messages, can even be considered as a substitute for a physical connection. Or perhaps this is a new type of connection. A hyper-connection. This is the new reality, this is the hyperreality where everything, everywhere, all at once, is somehow connected, and you’re almost there, except you never were.

I do not even just mean about connections, I mean, that everything that makes up your perspective of yourself, what you think is the closest approximation to be the truth of you, is ultimately made up of hyper-ideas. Your job, your emails, your bank account, your possessions, your assets, your debts, your relationships, your lacks, your wants, your hobbies, your self-experession… there is a simulation and simulacra of all these elements somewhere online. You exist, because the simulation acknowledges you exist. But dare you exist because you know you exist?

When did the drug slip into my drink? How did I not realise it sooner? Does it matter that I even realise it now? Probably not. I still know what is real and what is not. I know I am hungry when I do not eat, I know my body is weak when it is sick. I know I would hurt should my relationship cease, I know that even if there is an existential dread about succumbing to a hyperreality, it will not pay my bills to ensure that I can continue to exist in current society. Alas, again, this hyperreality is one that I deemed it to be, it is connected to my hopes and my fears. It is connected to my passions and my apathy. It is here now, and it matters to me, but I know that if it disappears, it evaporates into the ether of chaos, and that is the reality. It’s hyper, because you think it’s part of something, or that there’s a system holding it together. But in isolation, it’s just reality.

In isolation, everything and every non-thing, is as is.