Welcome to Euphoratopia

Well, here it is—the digital compendium of my life. A regurgitation. A simulacrum.

The Signifier and I am the Signified. Or, at least my personal brand is the signified—not the real me, but that distinction only returns us to the simulacrum. Alas.

However, that's enough sciolistic pontificating for now (an ironic choice of words, perhaps). I am just completely fascinated with the nature of reality—always have been. What is it? Do our eyes really allow us to see it as it is? All that pseudo-philosophical junk. And in today's digital age it's even more fascinating.

Signs exist all around us—pointing us to something—or maybe just distracting us from something else. Digital media has and is rewriting (rewiring, maybe…) information transfer models. Consumerism has gone psychotic and hedonistic. And we are all caught right in the middle of this glorious, schizophrenic mess.

It can be ultimately euphoric at times, but, at its peak, the euphoria is usually fabricated. The reality we are enjoying has been constructed, tested, processed, and broadcast. The truth behind the reality does not exist—it is, in essence, a utopia, which literally means no place. Hence euphoria + utopia = euphoratopia.

A real word would not have sufficed, so it was necessary to create the new from the old—to reassemble—recreate.

And this blog is nothing more than an extension of that hyperreality—a digital diary that will house and disseminate my thoughts, reflections, and experiences as I bounce about this sick Disney Land we call a world.

Cheers.

--William Thomas Stone    

The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.
~Ecclesiastes (Jean Baudrillard)

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P.S. For those interested in exploring certain concepts more in-depth, I have provided a few links and snippets on hyperreality, postmodernism, and semiotics.

I.

The concept most fundamental to hyperreality is the simulation and the simulacrum (see Simulation/Simulacra). The simulation is characterized by a blending of 'reality' and representation, where there is no clear indication of where the former stops and the latter begins. The simulacrum is often defined as a copy with no original, or as Gilles Deleuze (1990) describes it, "the simulacrum is an image without resemblance."

[Source Link: http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/realityhyperreality.htm]

II.

Hyperreality is an inability to distinguish between what is real and what is not. Hyperreality can be described as enhanced reality. Some people become more engaged with the hyperreal world than with the real world.

Hyperreality is thought to be a consequence of the age that we live in. Hyperrealism is a postmodern
philosophy that deals in part with semiotics, or the study of the signs that surround us in everyday life and what they actually mean. For example, a king may wear a crown that symbolizes his title and power. The crown itself is meaningless, but it has come to take on the meaning that society has given it. The reality of the crown and the hyperreality of what it stands for are interwoven.

[Source Link: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-hyperreality.htm]

III.

It is in the two Disneys, where he finds the ultimate expression of hyperreality, in which everything is brighter, larger and more entertaining than in everyday life. In comparison to Disney, he implies, reality can be disappointing. When he travels the artificial river in Disneyland, for example, he sees animatronic imitations of animals. But, on a trip down the real Mississippi, the river fails to reveal its alligators. "...You risk feeling homesick for Disneyland," he concludes, "where the wild animals don't have to be coaxed. Disneyland tells us that technology can give us more reality than nature can."

…But, perhaps his most interesting perception occurs when he discovers, behind all the spectacle in Disneyland, the same old tricks of capitalism, with a new twist: "The Main Street facades are presented to us as toy houses and invite us to enter them, but their interior is always a disguised supermarket, where you buy obsessively, believing that you are still playing," he writes. He similarly finds in Disney, "An allegory of the consumer society, a place of absolute iconism, Disneyland is also as place of total passivity. Its visitors must agree to behave like robots."

[Source Link: http://www.transparencynow.com/eco.htm]