Social Media and Baudrillard’s Simulation and Simulacra
Introduction
Social media is relatively new, and the way we interact with it and understand our identities within the context of it is an area that draws a lot of interest to me personally. From a utilitarian standpoint, it seems like a godsend, a way to connect many people and streamline communication. Perhaps because of the way it has been commodified, or some other deeper cultural issue it seems to be the case that the relationship between social media and the individual is a contentious or complicated one. I would like to analyze our relationship with social media through the lens of Baudrillard, and specifically, his essay Simulation and Simulacra in order to paint a more clear picture of what I believe is happening with social media and the way we are using it.
Explaining Simulation and Simulacra
Baudrillard was a modern sociologist and philosopher who primarily wrote about postmodernism and topics in relation to that. Simulation and Simulacra is one of his most well-known works, and also can be quite obtuse so I will try to distill the most important information that is relevant for our analysis. The main argument being put forth by Baudrillard is that nothing in our culture is “real” in the true sense of the word. Everything that we consider real is simply a “simulacrum” which is basically just a representation or copy where the original no longer exists, like a statue of a person or picture. He argues that we rely so much on signs, and symbols, that we mistake those signs and symbols as the reality, causing us to live in a sort of simulation of reality which he refers to as “the hyperreal”. The hyperreal is a state of being where the distinction between what’s real and what’s not real is so blurred that we are unable to understand where one begins, and the other ends. Baudrillard uses a good explanation that I will summarize, to explain exactly what he means.
The explanation he mentions is an old fable, about a king who wanted a map that perfectly represented the kingdom he ruled. In order to do so he hired the best map makers to draw up this map. Eventually, the map had become so physically big that it covered the entire kingdom. After the passage of time the kingdom would eventually fade, and all that was left to exist was the map that was drawn up of that kingdom. This is what Baudrillard means when he talks about a simulacrum. The kingdom is the real, map is the simulacrum simply a representation of the kingdom but since the kingdom no longer exists, the representation has become the reality. This is what Baudrillard believes is happening in modern society with almost everything we can think of.
Social Media and the Self as Simulacrum
With my brief explanation of Baurdillard (there is a lot more you can read about and interpret on your own) we now have a foundational understanding of what he believes is happening behind the scenes of our culture. Through this understanding I would like to make the argument that social media and the way it works, as well as how many of us use it as a primary form of communication, is essentially turning each person into a sort of simulacrum, where each profile is just a representation of the individual where the individual no longer exists. This is important because it has an effect on the self and how we interpret our identities, but it also effects the way we interpret the identities of others who we interact with on these platforms, creating a hyperreality where the lines of where our online identity and our offline identity are so blurred that it’s impossible to tell the difference. I will use Instagram to make my case since most people are familiar with it, and the terms used by Baudrillard can be easily applied to it.
Instagram is perhaps the easiest, but also perfect illustration for trying to understand the relationship between what’s real and the simulacrum. I would say that there are two primary ways to engage with Instagram overall. The platform is relatively low engagement, and the first method of engagement is posting pictures or videos. These pictures or videos are posted to convey a certain thing about the person posting it. Whether to alert their friends to what they are up to, present a false reality, or just to boost self-esteem, the motivations for why someone would post something are seemingly endless. The “goal” or end result of posting something is generally intangible like getting likes, or having people interact with you via the comments. The secondary method of engagement is when you are actually scrolling through your feed and looking at all the pictures and videos that you’ve chosen to follow, and then liking or interacting with those pictures, whether by commenting or sending them to others. Generally you choose what you get to see because you choose who to follow, and for the sake of brevity I won’t get into algorithms and how they choose content for you. But the biggest takeaway is that you are encouraged to not really linger too much on what you’re actually seeing.
The fact that instagram is built upon these two methods of engagement is a problem. The first method is a problem because posting can become quite stressful. When you post something you are likely wondering, what will someone think of this? How do I get people to think a certain way about me by posting certain things? If I post picture A vs. Picture B, which one will make me look better? These are some questions someone might ask themselves, and maybe not everyone will, but to some degree you will be trying to convey some information about yourself and are building some sort of identity around these images. This instagram identity is meant to be a representation of yourself, a simulacra where the full self no longer exists in the profile, and only bits and pieces meant to represent the self are present.
On the flip side, our second method of engagement has us look at these images and draw something from them. We may look at someones profile and decide things about an individual based on the pictures they post, and our interpretation of these symbols may be completely wrong about the original person posting them, and may be wrong about the image that the person is trying to cultivate. But because of the way we interact with the platform we do not really spend too much time thinking about every single picture we see. It would be impossible to do this even if we wanted to, and there’s no guarantee it would be correct. So even our interpretations of others are simulacra in themselves. The image we have in our mind is just a simulacrum of a simulacrum, an interpretation of an interpretation where the original no longer exists. This creates the hyperreality described in the orignal text. So much of our interaction is based on signs and symbols that what’s real gets lost, and what’s left is the simulacrum. I think people are even coming to the conclusion that engagement on the platform isn’t really “real” which is why we see so many people having a rinsta (real instagram) and a finsta (fake instagram) where people can be more themselves. It is interesting though that the rinsta is where people would tend to be “fake”, but the finsta is where someone might be more “real”.
Conclusions
Originally I wanted to look at Twitter, but ultimately I think it would be redundant as you can apply the same argument of a profile as a simulacra that is being interpreted by people whose interpretations are simulacra in themselves, with the original person no longer present in either version. The only difference on these other platforms lie in the nuances of each platform and what exactly about a person is trying to be conveyed, but the mechanisms through which anything happens is similar enough that it can be applied across multiple platforms. The feedback loop of posting and interpreting leads to the hyperreality described by Baudrillard where it becomes difficult to discern what’s real about someone and what is not, and even can cause an individual to call themselves into question, especially when trying to understand what others make think of them based on what they post.
Baudrillard has somewhat of a bleak view on the conclusions we draw from this. What I can parse from reading is that it’s an inevitability of modernity and appears to be irreversible. But I think at the very least we can become aware to this hyperreal world that has been constructed online and offline and just call into question our own relationships with social media and the effects it has on our identity, and interpersonal relationships. Encouraging self-reflection and trying to understand the world around us is a way to not fall into the often self-destructive patterns that the online world can create, and if you feel comfortable with how you exist online then that’s great, but sometimes it is good to take a step back and think about the mechanisms we are participating in, and if they are really the ones we want to devote our energy to.
Link to Simulation and Simulacra
https://epk.home.xs4all.nl/theory/Simulation/Baudrillard_Simulacra%20and%20Simulations.pdf