We Live In A Simulation (Kind Of)

Simulacrum and the Self-Referential Internet

A still from Westworld (2016-2022), one of my favorite meditations on simulation

Amid an entertainment industry akin to the brightest and sweetest of candy stores, I’ve often wondered why so many are drawn to the mundane. Kardashians, contact sports, reality competition shows - it’s clear why people are compelled to view these things. They embody the extreme version of their respective category, whether that’s extreme wealth, beauty, or physical and mental acumen. Common people don’t often possess these things in their lives, hence why they’re apt to peek behind the curtain, catching a prolonged glimpse at what technical greatness is supposed to look like. 

Nonetheless, in the past decade, livestreams, vlogs, and “What I Do In a Day” videos have illustrated how much people care about other people’s mundanities, especially when they’re recorded and edited in a visually appealing, digestible manner. I’ve often found myself utterly gripped viewing a video of someone running through their day-to-day routine, from the moment they drink their morning coffee until the second they spit out their toothpaste before bed. To say that I’m vicariously living through these people would be inaccurate - I drink coffee, I brush my teeth, and I go about the same ordinary daily tasks that they do. So why am I so entranced?

It’s a question I’ve often broached in articles, in conversation, and in my own head. I’ve approached explanations but have yet to determine an answer I find wholly satisfactory. There is certainly a level of gratification that comes with watching someone complete chores that we, ourselves, are tasked with. Our mirror neurons fire as we watch a person exercise and clean their kitchen, granting partial satisfaction without having to expend the energy necessary to complete the tasks ourselves. Similarly, there’s a certain level of learning that comes with watching others operate online - we gain some sense of whether our day-to-day lives approximate the “normal” standard that others do and can adjust as needed.

However, I wonder more and more whether our keenness to watch the ordinary is not actually a draw to the mundane at all. We aren’t drawn to reality but instead to “hyperreality”; a condition in which there is no clear distinction between the “real” and the representation of the “real.” On the internet, the image of something and the thing itself have collapsed. Instead, we find ourselves inching toward an existence that Jean Baudrillard warned of, in which representation is valued over reality itself.

In Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation (1981), the French philosopher essentially describes “simulacra” as a representation or imitation of an image. In a culture increasingly saturated by media, we’re surrounded by such representations - some of which more clearly reference a legitimate antecedent than others. A viewer of an oil landscape painting understands that the painting isn’t the real countryside, but knows that it’s meant to (imperfectly) represent a real landscape. Simulation, on the other hand, is more of a process, imitating the function of a whole, original operation.

In discussing the successive phases of an image, Baudrillard describes how a representation can reflect reality, but also mask and obscure it to the ends of eventually having no relation to reality to begin with. Instead of mirroring the real world, an image or process can merely be a model of reality with no reference to a concrete origin. In this “hyperreal” state, there is only a simulation of a simulation. The classic example of this circumstance, and the one that Baudrillard provides, is Disneyland, in which felt mascots, costumes, and make-believe sets simulate faux realities that are transmitted through Disney-produced films and merchandise. Disneyland simulates the simulations of Disney’s fictional creations, cannibalizing itself until there is no legitimate referent - no distinction between reality and representation. 

In our collective work to unlearn the detriments of social media, we’ve more or less come to the consensus that what we see on social media is fabricated. We’ve come to understand that what we post online isn’t a true representation of our lives, but a finely tuned version, edited and curated to make our lives appear rosier to ourselves and others. If you’re anything like me, you’ve likely read and discussed the phony nature of social media in self-help books, academic texts, and health classes, and discussed it among friends over drinks. We all know this - at least on paper - by now. However, what we’re failing to grasp, is the speed at which our social media presences are becoming further removed from first-order representations of our lives. They’re becoming obscured and denatured to the point of no longer referencing reality, but rather, referencing the other manipulated versions of reality we’re presented with online - particularly by prominent influencers.

If I post a monthly photo dump on Instagram, I don’t fully intend to represent the events of my month accurately. I aim to allude to the signature, nonchalant photo dump style popularized by trendsetting accounts and influencers. Those influencers simulate their own lives via photo dumps, and I, a common follower, attempt to simulate their simulation. I am not candidly referencing my reality, but rather more directly reproducing the simulated, hyperreality presented by other Instagram users, and simply swapping in photos from my own camera roll. Social media has become less of a fabricated version of our own lives and more of a collaborative, self-referential simulation that we adorn with glimmers of our offline lives to conceal its simulative qualities. The internet - and the visuals, behaviors, and memes that compose it - has become a self-contained ecosystem, a neverending inside joke - recycling material, referencing its own wits, and feeding off itself like a snake eating its tail until there are few shreds of the “real” left.

Our collective agreement that social media is a simulation is important in upholding that there is a real life outside of it. It’s generally agreed upon that there is the “fake” internet, and there is the “real” world and that we need to spend more time in the latter. In this way, simulations are theoretically helpful to our culture - aiding us in determining what’s real and what’s representation when the lines between the two realms continue to progressively blur. Baudrillard similarly argues this in his Disneyland example, writing “Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real.” The irony, in Baudrillard’s eyes, is that America, on the whole, is becoming increasingly not real - prioritizing image and representation over reality, with people no longer looking at or touching one another in the organic ways they might have in the past. Social media carries a similar relationship to reality - there is little to distinguish between online and offline domains when what we prioritize and value in either dimension is virtually the same.

A thumbnail from the YouTuber and influencer Hannah Meloche whose videos I frequently watched in high school and college

What happens when what’s “fake” becomes irrefutably “real”? The internet, with all its simulation-like qualities, is undoubtedly one of the most important contemporary tools for learning and connecting in the twenty-first century. And, in all its simulative glory, it’s also become a grand instrument of delusion - whether it’s helping enable the planting and sowing of disinformation or helping facilitate image insecurities via the proliferation of appearance-focused content. Incidentally, there is an argument to make about the internet being a net-neutral tool, and its products being a greater reflection of the users than the device itself. Baudrillard theorized simulacra and simulation long before the advent of social media - humans have been drawn to skewed representation and hyperreality for quite some time, and the internet just brings it that much closer.

It would be quite impossible, and likely unproductive, to try to convince people to fully deny themselves an interest in simulations in the state of our current world - it’s the water that we swim in. I think we might have better luck seeking grounding by searching for the referent - the antecedent - in our virtual pursuits. When we ask ourselves whether an image or video - a morning routine, a mirror selfie, a therapy TikTok - is directly simulating something real and concrete or merely something else on the internet, I think we’d be surprised at how much obscurity we’re able to start demystifying. In doing so, I think we’ll also learn that our obsession with the mundane isn’t in fact an obsession with the mundane at all. Extreme sports and reality television, OOTDs and makeup routines - the extraordinary and ordinary aren’t as different as we think.

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While this article offered a glimpse at simulacra and simulation, I highly recommend looking into Jean Baudrillard’s ideas independently, as there’s only so much I can capture in this essay. I referenced this PDF of Simulacra and Simulation (1981) frequently while writing this piece. In addition, I was inspired to work on this essay after listening to this podcast episode of Binchtopia about simulacra and the detriments of parent influencers - I highly recommend listening.