(And Other Stories)
Simulacra, Hyperreality, and the Collapse of Meaning in a Post-Truth Vibe-Economy
TL;DR
In a world where stories no longer reflect reality but replace it, we’re drowning in hyperreality—a vibe-driven economy where shallow symbols like pizza parties and viral hashtags overshadow meaningful change. Drawing on Baudrillard’s theory of simulacra, I explore how narratives, AI, and algorithms dominate our perception of truth, from Starbucks’ performative activism to the illusion of the American Dream. The danger? Our collective obsession with feel-good gestures over substance leaves us with empty symbols and unfulfilled promises.
But there’s hope. By understanding these hyperrealities, we can harness their power—not to manipulate, but to lead and inspire. The storyteller holds the key to shaping a better world in this post-truth landscape. The question is: will we use this power wisely, or will we keep settling for pizza Fridays?
Stories no longer explain our reality—they have instead replaced reality. Once, narratives were reflections of our shared environment. They offered definitions of the world, ways to understand its complexities and contradictions, and, most importantly, ways to find meaning within our world. Stories derived their very power from reality, anchoring themselves in what we collectively experienced, wrestled with, and sought to understand.
Stories as Mirrors: How Narratives Once Defined Reality
John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath captured the economic despair of the Great Depression, grounding its narrative in the real lives of displaced families during the Dust Bowl and offering a lens through which to understand systemic inequality and resilience. Toni Morrison’s Beloved wrestled with the legacy of slavery, turning personal tragedy into a powerful reflection of collective historical trauma. Similarly, George Orwell’s 1984 mirrored the fears of authoritarianism and the erosion of truth, a cautionary tale born from the political anxieties of its time.
James Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues explored systemic racism, familial bonds, and personal redemption, grounding its narrative in the struggles of Harlem life. Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find used Southern Gothic elements to examine the cultural and religious tensions of the American South. Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude transcended realism, yet its magical metaphors were deeply rooted in the political and social history of Latin America. Finally, Raymond Carver’s Cathedral distilled the complexities of connection and transformation in an ordinary moment, reflecting the emotional depths of the everyday human condition.
These narratives, and countless others, helped us understand the world. But today, the relationship has flipped. Stories no longer mirror the world; stories are the world.
The Flip: Stories Are Now the World
Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves epitomizes this shift, with its impossible architecture and layered narratives that blur the boundaries of perception. Similarly, Borges’ Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius describes a fictional world so vividly constructed that it begins to overwrite our own reality. Chuck Palahniuk’s Rant fractures time and truth into an oral mythology, while Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities builds an entire world from imagined descriptions. Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore and Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake fabricate surreal, hyperreal landscapes that feel more real than their origins. These works don’t just reflect reality—they construct worlds that take on lives of their own.
Viral narratives, crafted for emotional resonance or shareability, don’t need to be tethered to truth or logic. They simply need to exist—catchy, captivating, and contagious enough to create their own meaning. The memes, slogans, and campaigns we consume daily are disconnected from the realities they claim to represent. And yet, they define how we see ourselves, our societies, and our futures.
The Vibeconomy: Feelings > Facts
Kyla Scanlon, who is one of my favorite economists, writes in her year end review—a 2025 outlook with a 2024 retrospective—The Year Narrative Ate Reality—that 2024 was a year when narratives, driven by algorithms and generative AI, overtook objective reality. Scanlon argues that our world is increasingly shaped by stories, emotions, and virality, rather than by factual or rational planning. The idea of a plan becomes more important than the plan itself.
In other words, stories and feelings have become more powerful than facts. In the world of social media things go viral not because they’re true, but because they grab attention or spark emotions. It’s not about making the best plan to solve a problem; it’s about making the most exciting or shareable idea of a plan.
“…the meme of any plan matters more than the plan itself,” writes Scanlon.
Imagine a company meeting where one executive proposes a comprehensive plan to improve wages and address systemic issues, while another suggests, “Let’s throw a pizza party every Friday!” The first idea is complex and hard to quantify in an Instagram or a TikTok, but the second? It’s instant social media gold. Employees post smiling selfies with their slices, the company gets to look fun and generous, and the deeper issues—the stagnant wages, the crushing workloads—fade into the background. The pizza party becomes the perfect meme: a feel-good moment that overshadows the harder work of actual change, and the funny videos win because they’re a better story.
Hyperreality in Action: From Starbucks to Politics
Starbucks employees in Seattle, Chicago, and Los Angeles launched strikes recently, marking the union’s largest work stoppage since contract talks began over two years ago. More stores may join the picket lines daily, with the union aiming to escalate pressure as Christmas Eve approaches.
Representing over 11,000 workers at 528 stores—about 5% of Starbucks’ U.S. locations—Starbucks Workers United demands better wages and staffing. The company recently proposed a 1.5% pay raise “in future years” with no immediate increase, while the union argues there’s room to negotiate, citing CEO Brian Niccol’s potential $100M first-year compensation.
However, Starbucks has mastered the art of creating an inviting brand image that resonates with consumers, often overshadowing internal challenges like labor disputes. Their holiday-themed beverages and cups become a cultural moment each year, encouraging customers to share their experiences on social media. The company also emphasizes its commitment to sustainability, such as promoting ethically sourced coffee and reducing environmental impact. And through campaigns like #ExtraShotOfPride, Starbucks positions itself as an inclusive and socially responsible brand.
In an era dominated by narratives and emotional appeals often overshadowing facts and rational planning, it is crucial to understand and master storytelling to create meaningful change.
As Scott Galloway puts it, “The greatest skill […] is storytelling, it’s tapping into people’s emotions.”
And in 2024, algorithms and AI—the robots that decide what show up on TikTok or Instagram—fueled the dominance of dramatic narratives.
Art as a Lens: From Mona Lisa to Marilyn Diptych
All of this reminds me of French sociologist, philosopher, and cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard’s 1981 book Simulacra and Simulation. Baudrillard explores how reality has been replaced by a system of representations, creating a hyperreality where distinctions between the real and the artificial blur or collapse entirely.
Baudrillard outlines a four-step progression in how representations evolve over time. First, the simulation is a faithful copy of reality. The simulation then moves into a distortion or perversion of reality. The representation then pretends to be real, even though the representation is not nor ever has been real. Lastly, we see a pure simulation, a system where the real is entirely irrelevant.
Baudrillard’s theory moves from abstract thought and theory to tangibility when viewed through art history. Classical works, such as Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, reflect a cultural commitment to faithful representation.
The portrait captures the subject with meticulous detail: the soft contours of her face, the subtle gradations of light and shadow (chiaroscuro), and the delicate textures of her skin and clothing. Moreover, da Vinci’s mastery of sfumato—a technique that blurs the lines between light and shadow—adds to this faithful representation. It imbues the Mona Lisa with a lifelike quality, as though she exists in a real atmospheric space: the distant background, with its winding roads and misty hills. These elements work together to create an image that mirrors physical reality as closely as possible, inviting viewers to see not just a painting, but an almost tangible presence.
Movements like Cubism, however, begin to challenge the boundaries of representation. For example, Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon exemplifies this cultural shift, transforming reality through distortion and fragmentation.
The work depicts five nude women in a brothel, a familiar and grounded setting but fundamentally altered. The women’s forms are distorted into sharp, angular planes, abandoning natural proportions and anatomical accuracy. Their faces borrow from African and Iberian masks, rejecting classical western ideals of beauty and realism in favor of abstraction and cultural symbolism.
The spatial arrangement further distorts reality. Traditional perspective is discarded, and the figures seem to exist on a flat, fragmented plane, creating a disjointed and chaotic sense of space. The bodies, stripped of softness, appear jagged and confrontational, unsettling the viewer’s expectations of harmony or realism in art.
This painting challenges the viewer to see reality through a perverted lens, one that deconstructs the familiar and reconstructs it in a way that is jarring and alien. The result is a world that feels both recognizable and entirely new at the same time, a distortion of reality.
Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych, created mere weeks after Marilyn Monroe’s death, the piece captures the tension between the public image of Marilyn and the fleeting reality of her life. Warhol uses 50 repetitions of a single publicity still from her 1953 film Niagara, a photo chosen not for its personal connection to Marilyn but for its iconic status. The repeated image is vivid and colorful in one panel, evoking the glamor and allure of her celebrity persona. In contrast, the second panel features the same image fading into monochromatic abstraction, its clarity eroding with each repetition.
This fading effect mirrors the way Marilyn’s real-life identity was overshadowed by her hyperreal public persona. The colorful, bright side of the diptych represents the myth of Marilyn—the constructed celebrity image amplified by media and consumer culture. Meanwhile, the fading side reflects the fragility and eventual loss of the real person behind the image, emphasizing how her death underscored the disconnection between the constructed icon and the actual woman.
In Marilyn Diptych, Marilyn is no longer a person; she has become an eternal symbol, endlessly reproduced, detached from the real, and sustained purely by the simulation of her image.
Lil Miquela and the Death of Reality
Lil Miquela, a virtual influencer created in 2016 by the company Brud, exists entirely as a digital fabrication—a computer-generated avatar designed to look and behave like a real person. Her Instagram account (@lilmiquela) features highly curated posts showing her “living” a glamorous life: modeling outfits, attending events, and engaging in social causes. Despite her artificial nature, millions of people follow and interact with her as though she were a real human being.
Initially, her creators maintained ambiguity about her identity, which sparked fascination and debate online. Was she real? Was she CGI? Once it became clear that Lil Miquela was entirely virtual, it didn’t diminish her appeal. People comment on her posts, compliment her outfits, and respond to her captions as if she were a living, breathing influencer.
In 2019, Lil Miquela’s presence as a virtual influencer reached new heights when she appeared in a Calvin Klein commercial alongside supermodel Bella Hadid. Titled Miquela and Bella Hadid Get Surreal | CALVIN KLEIN, the ad featured the two sharing an intimate kiss, blurring the lines between the real and the artificial.
While some praised the commercial’s boundary-pushing creativity, others criticized it for perpetuating confusion about what is real and what is simulated. The kiss between Bella and Miquela symbolizes the full emergence of Baudrillard’s fourth stage of simulation—where the real becomes irrelevant.
Miquela’s participation in a major global brand campaign, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with one of the world’s top supermodels, demonstrates her integration into the same systems that elevate real human influencers. Miquela’s artificiality doesn’t matter because her followers engage with her as though she possesses agency and emotions. She is influential, relatable, and profitable, sexual, and desirable—not because she is real, but because she is designed to emulate and surpass the appeal of reality.
As Scanlon notes, ‘algorithms perfected their role as the new architects of desire.” Scanlon goes on to say that “one could argue that an algorithm is currently the shadow President-elect,” and not really Trump at all.
In Home Alone 2 and The Little Rascals, Trump appeared as a cultural shorthand for opulence and confidence. His cameos were not about depth or personality but about signaling an aspirational image: ‘This is what success looks like.’ The Apprentice took this further, casting him as the ultimate arbiter of power and competence. The show didn’t depict a nuanced businessman grappling with challenges; it presented a caricature of authority—a man who sat in a leather chair, issued dramatic one-liners, and seemed to effortlessly control his world. This image, endlessly broadcasted and memeified, blurred the lines between Donald Trump the person and Donald Trump the brand.
By the time he entered politics, Trump’s media persona had far eclipsed his reality. He wasn’t a candidate; he was a pre-packaged narrative. His exaggerated traits—his bluntness, his bravado, his catchphrases like ‘You’re fired!’—were already burned into the public consciousness, thanks to decades of media reinforcement. His transition from television to politics wasn’t a reinvention; it was a continuation of his role as a character designed for mass consumption.
His 2016 campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again” doesn’t explain a specific policy or solution—it’s a broad, emotional appeal that lets individuals project their own desires onto the narrative. It’s the political equivalent of Pizza Fridays: enticing, easy to understand, and emotionally charged.
In Baudrillard’s framework, hyperreality creates a new world of meaning that exists independently of the “real.”
Disneyland, one of Baudrillard’s key examples, simulates an idealized version of America that never truly existed. Visitors are drawn into the fantasy, experiencing it as more “real” than reality itself. Over time, the fantasy becomes the dominant frame through which people view the real world, erasing any clear distinction between the two.
This suggests there’s no way to “return” to an original reality because the original has either been forgotten or rendered irrelevant. In politics, the idealized “American Dream” has become that hyperreal concept—promoted through symbols like Trump Tower or campaign slogans—detached from the socio-economic realities many face.
The Economic Impact: Housing, Wages, and Vibes
Skyrocketing housing costs, stagnant wages, overwhelming student loan debt, and an increasingly inaccessible healthcare system—the promise of upward mobility that the American Dream represents feels more myth as structural barriers make achieving even basic financial stability increasingly difficult.
Housing affordability, for example, has reached crisis levels. Scanlon reports in a MarketWatch podcast that, “child care costs are up 32% since 2019,” elder care averages $10,000 a month, and wages haven’t kept pace with inflation. For younger generations, the dream of homeownership—the traditional cornerstone of American prosperity—feels unattainable, with high interest rates and limited housing supply further locking them out. These structural inequalities have created a growing disconnect between the economic metrics policymakers tout, like GDP growth, and the lived experiences of the public.
While traditional economics focuses on measurable data—employment rates, stock market performance, or inflation—Scanlon argues that the way people feel about the economy often matters more. She coined the term “vibecession” to describe moments when economic indicators are strong, yet consumer sentiment remains pessimistic. For Scanlon, these “vibes” aren’t just emotions—they’re expectations that shape behavior and outcomes. “Humans are the economy. How they vote, how they think about economic policy, the consumption decisions they make—those all really matter,” she says.
From Pizza to Purpose: The Danger of Shallow Symbols
In this “vibeconomy,” narratives and perceptions drive decision-making. Even if someone is economically stable on paper, their sense of security—or insecurity—is shaped by cultural and emotional currents. Like the office pizza party where employees are rewarded for record profits but see none of that prosperity reflected in their paycheck. Instead, they’re rewarded with the pizza party—a gesture meant to boost morale, but is hollow and insulting because the couple slices of peperoni and cheese don’t address the underlying issue: stagnant wages and overwork. The economic “vibes” people experience are detached from the metrics policymakers rely on to tell a story of success. The metrics may say everything is fine, but the vibes—the lived experience—say otherwise.
For Baudrillard, meaning dissolves entirely in a hyperreal world. It’s not that nothing matters, but rather that the things we traditionally rely on for meaning—truth, authenticity, and reality—are replaced by simulacra, shallow symbols that exist only to perpetuate themselves. The office pizza party is a symbol of appreciation, but one that has been stripped of any real value or impact. Starbucks’ #ExtraShotOfPride campaign is a similar hyperreal construct. The rainbow-colored merchandise and polished Instagram posts signal support for LGBTQ+ communities, but this narrative ignores the company’s refusal to address systemic worker issues like fair wages or staffing shortages. The consumer latches onto the feel-good aesthetics—“They love the gays!”—without questioning whether that love translates into meaningful action. If the support isn’t real, does the #ExtraShotofPride symbol itself have any valid, real meaning? Or is the illusion of support all that’s left? And is the illusion enough?
Similarly, Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” is a hyperreal construct—enticing, emotionally charged, and detached from the socio-economic realities of those who support it.
People crave these symbols because they provide a narrative that’s easy to latch onto. Like Pizza Fridays, the problem is never solved, but at least the office pizza party provides the illusion of addressing the problem. These weak symbols thrive because they tap into emotional currents, bypassing logic or substance entirely.
The danger, as Baudrillard suggests, is now that we’ve fully entered this hyperreal world, there’s no going back. Meaning has become untethered from reality, leaving us with empty symbols and narratives. The pizza party doesn’t fix wages. “Make America Great Again” doesn’t fix the American Dream. But in a world dominated by vibes, they don’t have to—they only need to feel like they do.
A Post-Truth World: Can We Find Meaning?
To be reductive, essentially, nothing matters. And that seems like a bleak 2025 that we are headed toward. But where Baudrillard leaves us without hope, Scanlon offers a different solution. She doesn’t advocate rejecting technology or hyper-narrative reality but understanding and leveraging tech and story wisely.
“We can’t escape this stuff! This is our world. Not accepting it as a reality or speaking of the past with a rosy hue is a waste of time. You must accept where you are,” she says. “The path forward isn’t about fighting them [the hyperrealities]. It’s about understanding them, [the technologies and symbols], clearly enough to harness them effectively.”
The Way Forward: Mastering the Meme
The path forward, in her view, is not escape but mastery.
Social media, particularly platforms like TikTok and Instagram, fractures attention into ever-smaller slices. Users are bombarded with rapid-fire content, leading to shorter attention spans, doomscrolling, and a tendency to focus on shallow narratives rather than deeper truths. Networks like Twitter (now X) amplify outrage and anxiety through viral posts, sensational headlines, and polarizing debates. This fosters echo chambers and escalates tensions on topics like politics or health crises. Yet these same platforms democratize content creation, allowing anyone with a smartphone to reach a global audience. They have launched careers, empowered marginalized voices, and provided educational resources for millions. And these same platforms connect people across vast distances, enabling solidarity and mutual support during crises or shared interests.
Attention is a form of prayer: what we focus on is what we become. By directing attention toward meaningful actions and connections rather than shallow distractions, we can reshape the narratives that dominate our lives. This involves measuring and valuing empathy, understanding, and creativity rather than just engagement metrics or profit.
As Scott Galloway points out, storytelling is the greatest skill of our time—not because story offers truth, but because story taps into what people feel, desire, and fear. The same platforms that fracture attention and amplify outrage also provide the means to craft stories that inspire, unite, and educate. In the “vibecession” Scanlon describes, where feelings often outweigh facts, the ability to harness this power of story becomes not just a tool but a responsibility.
What if we stopped seeing storytelling as a way to manipulate and instead viewed it as a way to lead? Galloway suggests that those who understand narrative control can wield it for more than just clicks or profit—they can use story to move society forward. Imagine a narrative-driven world where stories don’t merely mimic reality or distract from it but help us construct a better version of reality.
Baudrillard may argue there’s no going back to “the real,” but maybe we don’t need to. Instead of lamenting the hyperreality, as Scanlon says, we can choose to shape it with intention. The challenge—and opportunity—is clear: in a world where the meme of a plan matters more than the plan itself, the storyteller becomes the architect of what comes next.
