Baudrillard says "Whereas unconditional realization is irrevocable, since we are no longer either alienated or dispossessed: we are in possession of all the information. We are no longer spectators, but actors in a performance, and actors fully integrated into the course of that performance" [1]. I think this is particularly applicable to the web. People are creating performances of themselves, but it is not themselves, it is a representation. Yet when we encounter someone's home page it often seems like we're getting to know this person, we're finding out about a real person on the "other end" of the wire, the real person who typed this in. And even if it is not a completely faked identity, it still cannot be the true identity, the true identity is by necessity much too complex for such a straightforward presentation. There is still no original for it, it is just a paste together of possible elements of a real identity. Mark Amerika demonstrates the inclination of the web's potential for both performance and hyperreality throughout his "Hypertextual Consciousness". On the net, most people are drawn to fictionalize:
"on the net, nobody knows how sexy you really are, how bad the dog gets whipped, how crude the sadistic brute can be, how ambiguous the thought patterns generally are, what race makes you salivate, what gender makes you cringe,what age you first got laid, in whose biology you are now swimming, in what hospital you gave birth, in what signal you now divest:

unless you publish all of this information as part of your public domain narrative environment:

but who's to say that what you publish is true?

what is truth in an adversary culture?

is virtual documentation always already the fictionalized representation of a pseudo-autobiographical self whose hypertextual consciousness is being filtered through the mediumistic apparatus called the post contemporary cyborg-narrator?" [2]





[1] Perfect Crime, 27

[2] Hypertextual Consciousness [beta-version]

navigation tips physical sources digital sources feed me back