In collaboration with Kaiser Irfan.
Social media platforms have offered new possibilities in the study of the case of law and nature; it is a tool that has altered what we thought everyone knew; the inherent human idea of true and false information. It proposes a range of realities of events and how they can be presented, and then the ultimate question; did they actually occur?
Humans, being dreamers by default, often engage with various forms of hyper reality, whether we are assessing objects or our destinies. And hyper reality can be said as a fragile belief. It is the inability of our consciousness to differentiate reality from a simulation of reality; it is an extremely underrated attempt at trying our luck.
Hyper reality proposed by social media platforms can be unimpressive and unhealthy at times, but it has earned the approval of our conscious. In the postmodern world of today, we are increasingly bombarded by deeply distorted, edited and distanced images of alternate realities and, lucid and charming perspectives on events.
Social media platforms facilitate our celebration and discontent with our life by erasing boundaries, creating illusions of lust for life and a channel that easily switches between absence and presence, true and false. An example of this hyper reality could be an event occurring in space and time that is now increasingly linked to “observer reviewed reality” – a peer review or affirmation of simulated reality being experienced through social media as the objective reality of life. This network of approval ultimately substitutes white with black, the real with a simulation, all in accordance with algorithms of our desires, hopes and imagination. It is an effort to present an agreed-upon objective truth.
We are all participants in this dance of perception; every picture you upload, every advertisement you encounter, every video you share is ultimately a half-truth and its consequences will always reassure us like some exceptional acts of our beloved imagination. This constant bending and shifting of reality is not an uncommon notion and the quantum nature of our reality has long been hinted at as being permeable, flexible and nonlinear. It is illustrated in eastern philosophical texts on space and time as manipulable and abstract. Uncertainty is at the core of this universe and everything that is present in it. All that is present feeds on all that is absent. This opens many avenues for perceptual creativity, manipulation, espionage and even reality sabotage.
The screen has become another proverbial retina; we keep staring at our screens until we become virtual conquerors, establish our own empires, and create our reigns of logic as everything actually in practice becomes secondary. Reality doesn’t disappear altogether; on the contrary, it escapes us.