59 Probes on the Fake and the Real

Appetizing aphorisms, metaphors, and more for the right hemisphere of your brain

May 24, 2024

Today I want to focus on the dialectic between the fake and the real.

If you don’t know what I mean by “dialectic,” that’s OK. Think of it as a clash and a conflict and a conversation between that which seems to be and that which is. Today’s post is an invitation to contemplate the fake and the real. It’s as simple as that.

I’m not aiming for total closure or the last word; you have enough of that in your media diet, I’m sure.

You might call these “probes.” That’s what McLuhan might have called them. They’re meant to poke, prod, lift, uncover, reveal, irritate, etc. They’re mostly a mashup of aphorisms, metaphors, theses, fragments of knowledge (a la Bacon), etc.

What follows is deliberately puzzling and riddle-like. Shklovksy described poetry as roughened or coarsened language meant to slow down the automatism of perception. I want to provoke and stir the coals here. We’re not sitting down to eat just yet; we’re still cooking.

Some probes are contradictory. They’re meant to stir the pot. Again, we’re still cooking. If you don’t understand one, go to another. Feel free to move up and down the list at random.

Without further ado:

Not everyone deserves a trophy.
Not every trophy signifies merit.
Not every trophy looks the same.
Not every trophy should look the same.
A heavier trophy is harder to carry.
A lighter trophy is easier to throw.
We live in a world of plastic trophies: easy to abandon, easy to forget.
Plastic trophies are much more preferable than those collected by Colonel Kurtz, a celebrity amidst natives.
The celebrity has hitherto been considered more real than others.
Thanks to the availability of image-based media to the masses, everyone can play at being a celebrity.
Celebrities can play at being normal people.
Nobody knew what Abraham Lincoln looked like in his day (see Boorstin and Ken Burns on this point). Eminem has expressed his desire to be more like Abe Lincoln in this regard.
Nowadays, sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between normal people and celebrities, between the natives and Colonel Kurtz. The Greek term “demigod” has as much relevance today as it did in the ancient world.
The influencer is a demigod.
To meet a celebrity in the flesh is to participate in the aura of a god.
To touch what a celebrity has touched is to participate in the life of a god.
To become a celebrity is to become a god.
Not everyone can be a celebrity because not everyone can be a god.
Don’t even think about becoming a celebrity.
The big corporation is a faceless celebrity and therefore a god.
Don’t even think about becoming a big corporation.
We weave garlands with likes, subscribers, comments, views, listens, and streams.
Artifacts that have appeared in movies sell for greater amounts than more useful artifacts that have not appeared in movies.
To acquire an artifact that has appeared in a movie is to acquire a trophy. See #1-8.
Baseball cards with blemishes go for more than baseball cards without blemishes. The blemish is a mark of distinction in an age saturated with sameness. The blemish makes the card more real.
Take care not to add blemishes to yourself in the hopes of becoming more real. See #19.
Some cause drama just to prove they exist. Cf. Notes from the Underground.
It is well known that the movie theater is Plato’s Cave. We transcend the movie theater and enter the realm of the Forms not only through dialectic, as Plato thought, but also by watching movies about the fake and the real (i.e., The Matrix, Inception, The Truman Show, Jumanji, Peter Pan, Pinocchio, Blade Runner, etc., etc.).
Some take the blue pill. Others take the red. The only way out is through.
The copy is more fun than the original. It takes itself less seriously. Every meme and parody is a copy with a twist. What would Plato think of Weird Al Yankovic?
The copy is not always more fun than the original. The copy can be dangerous, especially if we fail to recognize it as such. When asked what they’d like to be when they grow up, which child would reply, “An imposter”?
The original is overrated. For how long has the Mona Lisa ceased to signify?
The original is not overrated. Someone, somewhere, has just said something that nobody else has said or thought ever before in the history of humanity. This person, whomever they are, is truly original.
When we lose track of the original, we lose track of the copy.
We have lost track of the original and therefore the copy.
The fake is to the copy as the real is to the original.
Only gods have the right to make copies.
Aeneas plucked the golden bough to prove his reality to the shades in the Underworld. When embracing the spirits, he’d hug right through them. Every world of meaning has its golden bough, CAPTCHA, or shibboleth.
Drumming up the courage to finally post on LinkedIn or Instagram or Tiktok is the digital equivalent of carving your name into a tree.
It takes courage to pretend, but it is not always virtuous to do so.
Fortune favors the mediated.
Whatever doesn't cancel me makes me stronger.
The fake creates an appetite for the real.
The fake creates an appetite for more of the fake, for signifiers unmoored from any signified.
“Real art” is an oxymoron.
Every simulation is “real art.”
Never before has the word “simulation” meant so much to so many people. We live in the age of the oxymoron, a contradiction in terms.
A “local celebrity” is an oxymoron. See #19.
The ontology of speed. That which can change the quickest is the most real. Money as exemplar.
The ontology of unpredictability. The predictable as less real than the unpredictable. Machines, plants, animals, etc. Human beings are fundamentally unpredictable (MacIntyre).
Generative AI is truly unpredictable. Today's jukebox makes a one-off song heard for the first time and never played again. Every evening is a Slow Tuesday Night.
Generative AI will never be truly unpredictable. True unpredictability presupposes a willingness to not respond at all. Input implies output for gen AI. Companies aren’t gutsy enough to make their machines truly unpredictable. Who would program the machine that refuses to reply?
A machine that could and would break itself—the most radical thing a machine could do.
Generative AI cannot plead the fifth. It cannot be silent.
Generative AI does not have a right to habeas corpus. It has no body.
A single letter separates mediate and medicate. Do you see what I mean?
To be mediated is to be real.
To mediate is to make real.
To mediate and to be mediated is the same thing as coming alive.

Thanks for reading. Last week I said I’d publish another article on Neil Gaiman. I didn’t lie. I only changed my mind. Forgive me. As it turns out, three posts on Gaiman is one Gaiman post too many. You might be able to tell that I wrote these probes with Bacon and Pascal and Nietzsche and McLuhan in mind.

Please consider making a donation of your time and attention by posting in the comments box below. Failure to do so may result in a fall into everydayness and (potentially) alienation.