“Where is the next Substack post, Dystop?”

- Unknown

A quote by an unknown actor.

Unknown because nobody has asked me this. Nobody has ever said it but someone might. Why don’t you read it out loud? Then someone (you) said it. You’re the unknown quote maker. Anyway.

People say: “Where is the next Substack post, Dystop?” Here it is. A new post every Sunday. That’s the goal. I will try to write a few short stories, a few longer short stories and comment on what other people who I follow on Twitter say. I want to get a little more philosophical too. I already have “writer” in my Tinder bio, why not add “philosopher” too? Maybe I’ll introduce myself like that in the future: “I’m Dystop. Writer and Philosopher. I also make money by sitting in an office chair.”

Lately, I’ve been thinking about living in hyperreality a lot. You’re living in hyperreality when you can’t tell the difference between what’s fake and what’s real. What is artificial and what is genuine. Think about that for 1 (one) second. Conclusion: You are living in hyperreality. Just like me.

Given the limited readership of my Substack, which gets almost all of its views through Twitter, I can make some assumptions about you. You’re a man, you don’t follow mainstream trends, you’re not entirely happy with “how things are going”. Just like me. And just like me, you and I live less in hyperreality than most other people. But we can’t entirely escape it either.

The world we live in is in large parts shaped by advertisement. Almost everything on social media is an ad. Maybe not for you because you curate your timeline, you use AdBlock, you don’t follow influencers who "just blog about their life". But the general internet user does not do this. He or she follows just about anyone and might complain about having to see ads every other Instagram-story-swipe, yet they keep swiping. They watch Netflix shows and absorb the values presented. They follow mainstream news (or social media influencers who tell them what the mainstream news said). Basically, almost every piece of information they are given is either fake or attached to an agenda.

It’s similar to living in the 1999 hit movie The Matrix. It’s different in that the real and artifical world blend together; exist at the same time.

A good example are those people who are hardcore fans of Apple and would hype up these electronic consumer products as uncrashable, indestructible and basically, you are stupid for ever even thinking about not getting everything the company has to offer. It’s a world created by Apple marketing that they slipped into. This was more an early 2010s thing but you understand what type of person I’m referring to.

The last girl I dated spent a lot of her free time on Instagram looking at what influencers post. You and I and her are not stupid. We all know they promote whatever product they get paid to promote. But she still bought Oatlyslop and tried to “live semi-vegan” because a number of her favorite influencers started shilling that version of reality to her. She obviously knew it wasn’t genuine but she still gave it a try. And she wanted me to give it a try as well.

There’s a lot of things going into this but you get the idea. The Big Evil Corporations want you living in a version of reality where their products beat their competitor’s and they try to create it via advertisement. Disney uses massive ad campaigns to convince the world the Marvel movies are good. Actors who work for a political party would want you to think their policies, decisions, ideology, whatever, beats their competitor’s on The Marketplace of Ideas. Again, you get the point.

I’m not mad at the Apple fan. He’s not hurting anyone. I wasn’t mad at my ex for following every new influencer trend. Just a little annoyed because she knew better but, hey, the forces of Total Advertisement are very powerful. As already stated above: Everyone is living in hyperreality (to an extent). It’s hard not to and it’s hard to escape even if you’ve realized it. It’s not a big problem unless you make decisions contrary to your own interest, unknowingly, because the reality constructed around you has false information.

The Global Pandemic is a great example of this. Not that it was entirely fake, the virus does exist, but, well, you know what I mean. Some people are living in a world where tens of thousands have died over the past few years. Other people live in a world where that is not the case. It’s up to you to figure out who is living in the real world and who is living in hyperreality.

So during this time you had (and still have) a lot of people giving advice. Whether it was good or bad advice obviously depends on what you think of the virus, the masks, the vaccines, etc. But their advice was heavily influenced by what they perceived to be the truth. And what their truth is, is dictated by what world they live in. And the world they live in is constructed by the omnipresent media.

“Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34)

I think you can see where I’m going with this. My mom and I had very different opinions about The Pandemic and it did annoy me at times. She and I were living in different forms of reality. My mother’s advice was not bad in her world. In fact, she was very concerned about me. In her world I was putting myself in danger. Similarly, my ex really thinks living on a soy-based diet is good for you and back in the day the iPhone really was ahead of its time.

Think of this when you’re judging people. I know, it’s pretty obvious advice. “Not everyone giving you bad advice has malicious intent.” Wow! But it’s not just about advice. It’s how a lot of people live their entire lives. An artificial world that is created by media products generally and advertisements specifically. And just like everyone thinks they are immune to propaganda, nobody is immune to ads.

It’s how the “Marvel-brain” crowd lives, for example. Their version of reality is entirely shaped by values and products associated with the biggest movie franchise of all time. You get the point.

The permanent state of hyperreality that everyone is always living in does not excuse mistakes or ignorance, of course. Actions are still real even if their motivations are based on falsehood. I will get into my thoughts about morality when taking Action in Hyperreality in a future post. For now, I hope I successfully introduced another angle from which to perceive the world.

I have a holistic mindset. I believe the more "tools" you have to understand the world with, the more accurate your worldview will become. In a way, lessening the effect of the reality-shapers.

Pictured: Cat resting shortly after experiencing hyperreality for the first time.

My introduction to the concept of hyperreality was through professional The Sims player Marty.

The concept originates from Jean Baudrillard.