I wrote this article for my PatrickWood.Substack.com subscribers recently. After more reflection, this needs to be released to the world as a stark warning: The total collapse of reality may be at hand. We have already witnessed mass formation during the Great Panic of 2020, where large swaths of the world seemingly lost touch with reality. That was just a foretaste of what is about to come.

This is hard to understand, and you might need to read it multiple times. Do it, lest you fall prey to a simulacrum. If you get it, weigh in the comment section below.? TN Editor

There's a big word that you can add to your vocabulary: Simulacrum. It is a hard word to wrap your head around, but one you are not too likely to forget. Indeed, you should not forget it!

Collins defines it as: "1) an image; likeness; 2) a vague representation; semblance; 3) a mere pretense; sham."

Cambridge Dictionary says: "something that looks like or represents something else".

Purdue University put it this way: "Something that replaces reality with its representation."

Jean Baudrillard wrote about this in a 1981 paper called "The Precession of Simulacra", where he digs deeper, making a distinction between a simulation and a simulacrum.

Whereas representation attempts to absorb simulation by interpreting it as a false representation, simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation itself as a simulacrum. Such would be the successive phases of the image:

it is the reflection of a profound reality;

it masks and denatures a profound reality;

it masks the absence of a profound reality;

it has no relation to any reality whatsoever;

it is its own pure simulacrum.

So, the switch for reality is anti-reality: "The simulacrum is never what hides the truth – it is truth that hides the fact that there is none."

This whole process does not happen in a vacuum because it involves human agency. Reality exists but human perception distorts it.

Just for review, reality slips into distortion, then into simulation, then finds its resting place in a state of simulacrum. Reality is subsumed by the simulacrum.

An example of simulacrum in the making

It is estimated that 90 percent of all online content will be generated by AI by 2025. This means news, social media posts, chats, pictures, videos, podcasts, websites, etc. A deluge of fake social media accounts will be run by AI. In short, everything.