In my CCT314 course, we’ve learned about Jean Baudrillard’s idea about postmodernism. As Professor Maharajh quoted from Baudrillard, “the two big ideas about postmodernism are simulation and hyper-reality.” (Maharajh, 2018)Ever since 1960’s, the idea of postmodernism that what people see and live in is not real seemed suits everywhere and all the time. Sometimes people doubt about life, and some people would lose control of themselves after being hypnotized because of various wired experience in life. Before the Internet era, the primary media were radio, television, broadcasting, movies in cinema, newspaper, and magazine, etc. During World War II, governments would use these media to impact people’s mind. Some governments used media to encourage and inspire people for justice and patriotism, while some governments use these media to perform propaganda for evil purposes. People are always dealing with ubiquitous brainwashing from mass media every day, and all forms of cultural infiltration can be seen in all aspects. Nowadays, people especially the ones who are millennial generations are heavily obsessed with social media applications on their smartphones, laptops, tablets with the rapid development of the Internet. With the rapid development of emerging technologies and the widespread dissemination of mass media, the world we live in today is a world soaked with various cultural propaganda. Information comes from all over the world is scattered and filled on anywhere we can see, we can hear, and we can perceive, such as on the Internet, social media, and posters. People’s thought and so-called common sense seemed to live in an unnatural world built on artificial and mediated based environment. These enhanced mediated creations would simulate the effects of postmodernism according to Baudrillard. For this paper, I will argue that the heavily mediated world we are living in reshapes how we see things in life and how we act in life. Since simulation and hyper-reality are the two key ideas in terms postmodernism as I mentioned early, I will mainly focus on these two sophisticated aspects of my research. In order to get to the bottom of the core and find out if postmodernism is reliable and trustworthy, I would like to immerse myself in this study to investigate the idea by comparing several detailed media uses I purposefully recorded in life with and without postmodernism’s approach. Specifically, I will examine a song I listened on YouTube, a conversation between me and my mother online, my experience on a video game on my IPad, a contrast between a friend of mine’s real life and her Instagram page, and a biased poster I saw on Facebook with even more biased and strange comments respectively. I will first list the details of what I experienced about this media uses and then analyze these media uses and my experiences in the end.

Before doing this project, I was not very much aware of the fact that media could impact people’s behavior indeed. I was only sure that we could have interactions with mass media frequently. The truth was revealed when I paid attention to the way I communicate with my mother on the Internet. I’m an international student, and my mother lives in a country with 12 hours of jet lag. The most familiar way we communicate with each other is through WeChat- a Chinese communication application works like Facebook’s Messenger. We were typing texts, sending pictures, having voice messages, and having video calls over the past two weeks just like before. Since whenever I’m here in Canada at 8 o’clock in the evening, my mother is there in China at 8 o’clock in the morning, we often communicate during my breakfast time or my dinner time. Most likely both of us would be at home during those periods. Health, study, life, and money are the four major topics we always communicate. During our chat, I was consistently curious about what was happening on the other side of the talk. Since the person is one of the most important people to me in the world, it was reasonable to have the desire to make sure our talk was safe especially when we exchange private and confidential information. Every time my mother would like to have a video call with me, I let her wait for a moment and start video calling after cleaning up my bedroom.

The next media use I would like to examine is a song I was listening to on YouTube, called “Bad at Love.” (HalseyVEVO, 2017)I listen to this song almost everywhere, whether on my way to school or at home. At first, I was obsessed by the rhythm of the song and Halsey’s voice. Then, I became curious about the lyrics and took a careful look at the lyric. The lyric is about a girl who always wanted to find her perfect love, but she always failed, and she felt bad and desperate about that. However, I don’t see anything relevant to this romance in the music video. There’s no narrative tells a failed love story. From my perspective, the scene in the music video could suit many other themes.

The third media use is my experience in a video game I play on my IPad. The game is a car racing game; players could upload photos to their profile and decide to be male or female in the game. In the beginning, I played a role of a male racing driver in the game. I then tried to switch my character in the game to be a female. I also uploaded a bunch of beautiful female pictures I found on the Internet onto the account profile. Surprisingly, many male players were waiting for me in front of the finish line and sent me messages to be friends with me after racing. My feeling was that it became much more accessible to achieve excellent grades ever since I switched my gender in the game.

Personally, Instagram is one of the popular social media applications that I most addicted to. Some of my friends are also big fans of Instagram, so I decided to pick a friend on Instagram and see is there anything different between her real life and her photos on Instagram. It’s hard for me to determine when and where to check Instagram. I just picked random moments to do it. My feeling was like a detective was reviewing a suspect’s profile and comparing the details I found since the way she acted in front of me does match what I saw on her Instagram.

The last media use I would like to mention is a controversial poster I saw on Facebook. It was the Economist’sFacebook page. The title of the poster is “How the West got China wrong,” and the background is a black-and-white China’s president’s picture with serious facial expression. (The Economist, 2018)At the bottom of the poster, a man is picking up the black-and-white photo, and there’s a coloured photo underneath the black-and-white one. (Ibid, 2018) It was a casual night; I was at home. My first feeling about this poster was unfriendly and hostile because in my understanding, portrait photos are usually black and white only when the person on the image has passed away or there’re evil purposes. I know exactly this poster is addressing the topic that the west versus the “others” and China is one of the “others.” Then I looked at the comments and found out that there are multiple responses to this poster, which made this post worthy of examining.

Just likeMarc O’day quoted from Jean Baudrillard, “with the massive increase in signs and images circulating in the postwar media society, the distinction between objects and their representations has disappeared. We are now living in a world of ‘simulation,’ where media-generated images function independently of any reality external to them. Signs and meanings float in a self-referential ‘hyper-reality’- an excessive reality and one which is literally ‘hyped’ by advertisers and others.” (O’Day, 2005)On the one hand, various cultures and information are widely and effectively disseminated through various means such as pictures, text, and voice. On the other hand, people live in a world wrapped up in social media all the time, always receiving new information and culture from social media. People’s thought space is infused with, filled in, and covered by the endless information, leaving only a limited space for thinking. Consequently, people’s thoughts are also influenced, guided, and changed because of the culture and information that pops up. When people are accustomed to using social media to create and obtain information, some of the cultural symbols and meanings that could have been represented are constantly being changed and gradually losing their original meanings. When people constantly change these symbolic meanings, these meanings can be artificially modified and modified according to specific needs, and such situation becomes more and more common and obvious. As a result, people are invisibly accustomed to living in a world that is influenced by artificially tailored cultural settings, and the original meaning of things is gradually less important. Instead, because people are becoming more and more accustomed to the mediated life, people’s understanding of things and truth depends on these cultures which are created and imitated by people and the meaning of their representations are changed. The fact that people think they recognize is not a scientific fact but a cultural transformation. For instance, in my example of the conversation between my mother and me, the only medium for us to communicate is the application that allows us to send text, audio, images, and videos. There’s no way for us to confirm everything is real and safe in our dialogue unless we sit in front of each other and have a face-to-face conversation every single time regarding the fact that we are over 11,000 km away from each other. The most we can do to help us with confirming the identities was to have a video call in this case. What I can see and hear from my mother is limited by several factors, such as the social media application itself and my mother. For my mother, my health and life are her biggest concern. I could behave like I’m healthy so my mum can be relieved even if I’m sick, I could also send her a photo of a young girl and me and tell my mum that we are married to surprise my mum. The so-called reality of my life in this mediated online conversation between my mother and me could be manipulated and spread by myself if I wish to. According to Cornel Sandvoss, “in this case, to give meaning to the representation I could create and express to my mum, my mother is required to fill the gaps left by the skeleton of minimal information with her own imagination.” (Sandvoss, P50, 2004) Logically, my words in the conversation would be her guide to imagine how my life was, and whatever my mother told me would also direct me to imagine her life. Hence, I conclude that the human-made reality based on mediated contents could effectively shape and manipulate how we see things in life in terms of communicating on social media.

Moreover, in the example of the video game I play, it is even more obvious that mediated content could fool people about what’s real by creating persuasive and convincing information and leave space for imagination. Eva Kingsepp suggests that “there is a basic loss of referential, as what surrounds us to an ever-increasing extent consists of a pure form with no content, hyperrealities that leave nothing to the imagination.” (Kingsepp, P367, 2007) In the actual game, I chose to be a female driver and decorated the character with feminine accessories, clothes, and ornaments. I also uploaded female photos that I believed would be attractive to male gamers. The game allows players to type and speak to communicate, I often type in an effeminate way to talk to other players in the game, but I never speak in the game. All the content I created are the key clues and indications that orientated to the imaginary conclusion that I am a female, which is something those people with this belief think is the reality. Jean Baudrillard pointed out that “the real is produced from miniaturized units, from matrices, memory banks and command models – and with these, it can be reproduced an indefinite number of times… As long as the created reality is operational, that’s all it matters.” (Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations, 1998)In fact, many players did show reactions to my female character in the game, such as waiting for me in front of the finish line in a racing game and sending me flirting messages. It is also reasonable to guess perhaps these male players actually are female in life. Therefore, mediated information could easily deceive people with false facts by manipulating people’s imagination based on purposefully modified contents, which could change and reshape the way people see things and act.

Last but not the least, let’s examine the example of my friend and her Instagram page. There’s a huge difference between this friend of mine in life and on Instagram. She always seemed active, sexy, glorious, and rich on her edited photos on Instagram. In fact, she hardly ever talked to people in life. I could not believe such a silent girl in life has had more than 9000 people following her on Instagram. I must admit that I loved her photos on Instagram more than herself in life. It is suggested that “the threshold was crossed when media representations began to exist independently of any tangible referent, and when simulation became more important than lived culture.” (Mueller, P86, 2016) and that “hyper-reality calls forth seduction.” (Baudrillard, P200, 2009) In this case, she apparently acts more attractive on Instagram than in life with her mediated photos and successfully got attention since she has had more 9000 audiences on Instagram. The way I see a person with such much popularity and such ability to create fantastic vibe is dramatically different from the way I see a quiet person in life. Thus, mediated content could change the way people view and think things in life because of the content could be modified and redesigned to create refreshing impressions.

When I re-examined the examples above without the mediated experience, the results were changed since there was no gap between what I perceived and what I needed to imagine based on mediated content. For example, I wouldn’t doubt about anything if I had a chance to talk to mother in front of her; I would still believe my friend is a quiet and cute girl instead of being incredibly popular; I would also have no chance to pretend to be a female in the racing game. Everything becomes clear and straightforward without the necessity to imagine.

To sum up, people’s reactions could be dramatically impacted when they face different mediated content, information, meanings, and representations. From my perspective, Baudrillard’s ideas about postmodernism that we are living in a world that is fully equipped with simulation and hyper-reality are reasonable, logic, and convincing with enough evidence. (Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations, 1998)In my point of view, the effects of mediated content are even more effective and maximized because of technological mediation like social media. In the era of globalization, people are heavily relying on the Internet to obtain information and communicate with others. People could easily get information from all over the world through the Internet. There are too many things could influence the information we would get and we would like to get. On the one hand, the risk of being lied is increasing because of the mediated content on the Internet. On the other hand, people could utilize the way they are fooled to protect themselves as well since “mediated reality” is editable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

Baudrillard, J. (1998). Simulacra and Simulations. Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, 164-184.

Baudrillard, J. (2009). Remember Foucault, Remember Baudrillard. The European Legacy, 14(2), 197-203.

HalseyVEVO. (2017, August 30). Halsey – Bad At Love. Retrieved from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdYFuCp3m9k

Kingsepp, E. (2007). Fighting Hyperreality With Hyperreality: History and Death in World War II Digital Games. Games and Culture, 2(4), 366-375.

Maharajh, D. (2018, March 22). Representation in Postmodern Times II. Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.

Mueller, C. (2016). Baudrillard’s Blues. Popular Music, 84-99.

O’Day, M. (2005). Postmodernism and Television. The Routledge companion to postmodernism, 112-120.

Sandvoss, C. (2004). Technological Evolution or Revolution? Sport Online Live Internet Commentary as Postmodern Cultural Form. Convergence, 10(3), 39-54.

The Economist. (2018, March 1). How the West got China wrong. Retrieved from Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheEconomist/photos/rpp.6013004059/10156350669919060/?type=3&theater