hyperreal

i am chronically uncertain about everything

[illuminerance]

in response to that LinkedIn post where the one guy talks about defeating AI by inserting random words into his writing

The girl sat at her desk at home. Today was one of the work-from-home days allotted to her I'm Lovin' It, although that wasn't accurate to say since she got to choose Hotel? Trivago which days she wanted to participate in the in-person work environment and which days she wanted to stay at home and marinate in her depression. She drank from that artisan coffee mug her State Farm Repair, State Farm Replace friend June, the potter, had given her last Christmas. Although it wasn't good for her and she knew it, she rarely washed the It's Finger Lickin' Good mug, and often left stale coffee in it, so there were many rungs which demarcated when she last stood up Just Do It! to replenish her energy by way of caffeine intake.

In addition to her big girl day job, the girl also worked America Runs on Dunkin a couple of odd jobs, including grocery shopping for strangers on an app, shovelling snow for her elderly neighbors, and, occasionally, tutoring. This was because her job was crap Have it Your Way and didn't pay her enough. The problem wasn't that she spent too much money, it was Where's the Beef? because her cat was elderly and sick and needed special care. Instead of putting the poor cat Have a Break, Have a Kit-Kat down, she instead opted to put it through kitty chemo. She knew it was selfish, but Expect More, Pay Less didn't want Mr. Furrington to cross the rainbow bridge just yet. The cat had a love-hate relationship with her but was full of Eat Fresh vitality and didn't seem ready anyway.

He flashed his Think Different butthole at her just now, and she shooed him away before dialing into her first Got Milk? video call of the day.

[illuminerance]

Today, I saw this fuzzy chair on the IKEA website, and it struck me as overwhelmingly like to the things that I would expect of an AI-generated image. It occurred to me that we are now entering an age where it will be impossible to know what percentage of a realised object originates organically from the human mind, and what percentage is at least "inspired" by AI. How fitting, then, is the name of this chair!

The chair's name is GREJSIMOJS. This appears to be well-suited, as GREJSIMOJS is made up of two parts: grejis meaning "stuff, junk" and moj meaning "thingy, doodad."

Now I'm thinking I should make a "random furniture generator" that scours the dictionary to programmatically create names for new furniture pieces, and, furthermore, that I should use computational design to randomly generate furniture objects as 3d models.

[thirdity]

“There are many things that I do not know because I photocopied a text and then relaxed as if I had read it.”

— Umberto Eco, How to Write a Thesis

[illuminerance]

you know what's an oxymoron? A "luxury RV." No car a person lives in and has to dump their own shit in is "luxury"

[illuminerance]

i got into grad school yesterday. I only applied to one school, and I got in, so I should be happy, but I'm not. It's sunny today; so sunny it feels cruel

I wish I had time to sit with my decision but I only have 10 days to decide. Most of that will be spent fighting with my mother's doubts which have been planted in my head

how does anyone know if they're making the best or right decision for them?

what's wrong with me?

I should've applied to the other school too, but applications weren't going to close for months, and I thought I had time. Who knew I'd get the first acceptance so early?

I don't even know if I would prefer the other school. I know my family is right. I should've given myself the time and freedom of choice. But I don't have that. I was trying too hard to just survive and I did the most I could with what I had left in me.

So why do I feel so much guilt and regret? How can I fix this?

[illuminerance]

"Air is a sculpture that we inhabit." - Anicka Yi

[illuminerance]

How many things have gotten easier over time without us realising it?

The bitter brussel sprouts pre-date me. I'm not THAT old. But I was told they used to actually taste pretty bad, and the reason so many of us love them now is because they've been genetically modified, and not because our taste preferences have shifted over a generation or two, or because we are more vigilant and robust about our inclusion of bacon as a seasoning.

I learned yesterday that Lego instructions used to be way more difficult. Instead of each step in the instruction booklet illustrating just the one brick that needed to be placed for that step, a single illustration might have shown how your whole model was supposed to advance after placing a number of bricks.

(I have thoughts™ on whether these Lego instruction booklets are improved from their predecessors, but that's not the point of this post.)

Anyway, what else is there that kids seem to do without much difficulty, that's NOT because they're actually more advanced than we were at their age, but rather, due to the way we've made things more accessible?

[illuminerance]

In another timeline, I would be a brilliant writer, and people would be interested in reading what I have to say. But alas! -- reading is no more, and even if I were to go to the trouble of writing something and getting published, I don't think it could ever have the impact it could have had.

I know people still read, but reading isn't the universal experience it once was. I remember when there were magazines at the hair salon, in the waiting room at the dentist, when you'd see people with a copy of the newspaper at the diner, when they'd pull out a book on a plane or a bus. Back then, adults read books too, and it was embarrassing, nay, impossible, for one's only books read to be bedtime stories to their children. Now, you could get published in something big like the New Yorker, and someone will barely muster the energy to say, "oh, cool!" in that polite yet ununderstanding way, as if to say, "huh, how nice for you that you are succeeding at your niche hobby I don't understand or have any interest in."

It makes me a little sad, really, because it makes writing feel all the less worthwhile. It's cathartic to write, to put pen to paper and expel whatever it is you need to get out of your system, but the written work itself has no reach unless there's an audience, even if that audience is to the tune of one or two other person(s).

The more unfortunate thing is the less I write, the less I am able to write. I think I've forgotten how to write properly altogether. No matter. There's nowhere near as many people on Tumblr as there were before, so I can scream into the void and write all sorts of incoherent things without conspicuousness, can't I?

[transgenderer]

whenever an LLM speech quirk becomes infamous presumably all the major labs will patch it out, but well still avoid it, as "the way LLMs talk" long after its true. in this way they will march across language, burning it behind them, and leaving us finally in silence

[illuminerance]

#8 You're Not Mine - Jag vet, du är inte min

The song "You're Not Mine - Jag vet, du är inte min" topped Sweden's charts, and was subsequently banned for being AI. It currently sits at 9th place.

Team Jacub, which is connected to Stellar AI, was asked if Jacub was a real person. They responded that it depends, because: "Jacub is an artistic project developed and carried by a team of human songwriters, producers, and creators. The feelings, stories, and experiences in the music are real, because they come from real people."

I think this is a pretty good example of what Baudrillard talks about with simulacra.

Albu Lee Meldau, a real human singer was used in the prompts used to generate the song. There's some similarities in terms of the style of the AI-generated music, but it's not like the song itself is a cover or rendition of something that was created before. It's more accurate to describe it as simulacra: a copy of something which has no original.

A human singer, Kaitlin Aragon re-recorded this AI-generated song and released it shortly thereafter, rendering the song hyperreal.

[illuminerance]

what's the opposite of the suspension of disbelief? or: why did I start this blog?

I encountered this gem of a quote from Jean Baudrillard's "The Masses: The Implosion of the Social in the Media," in the part where he's explaining that despite our convictions towards statistics as the authority on future truths, "deep down, none of us believes in them, any more than the gambler believes in chance, but only in Luck (with a capital, the equivalent of Grace, not the other, which is the equivalent of probability)."

The quote reads:

"An amusing example of this obstinate denial of statistical chance is given by this news item: 'If this will reassure you, we have calculated that, of every 50 people who catch the metro twice a day for 60 years, only one is in danger of being attacked. Now there is no reason why it should be you!" The beauty of statistics is never in their objectivity but in their involuntary humor."

(This is a bit different, but in my short stint as a New Yorker, last summer I was, in fact, the unfortunate witness of a person who committed suicide by jumping in front of a subway train at Grand Central -- something which my friends who had lived there for decades had never seen in their lives. But I digress.)

I find the anecdote about the statistics of attacks on the metro to be an excellent descriptor of what I consider to be the opposite of the suspension of disbelief, wherein the statirical irony -- and the humor of it -- exists only when we are taken out from the stupor and enchantment of what we believe we experience as "reality."

This concept is most clearly illustrated by Leandro Elrich's "Swimming Pool":

It looks like there's a bunch of people under a swimming pool, right?

But the only reason why this piece is so amusing is because it defies our expectations of what's true, and, furthermore, it's only cool or clever when it's revealed to us that a) it's "fake", and b) how it's done.

(The water is trapped in between two thin pieces of acrylic or plexiglass.)

I find examples of things like these in everyday life all the time, things that aren't real but have become "realer than real," HYPERREAL, if you will...

...only the vast majority of people NEVER stop to think about how weird and wacky, and outright UNNATURAL the reality we live in is.

Let this blog serve as a witness to the things which Baudrillard describe as "obscene," to this type of wry humor which can only be understood when we step back and question:

Is it real?

Or has reality been wholly be representations and reproductions, to the point of simulacra, where there is no longer any original? In other words: has simulated reality replaced the real?

And if it is, should be we be alarmed by it? Or at the very least, be called into consciousness so we can laugh about the ludicrousness of it all?

I sure hope so!

As Baudrillard said, "I suggest to you a vision of things which is no longer optimistic or pessimistic, but ironic and antagonistic." That's what this is all about.

[illuminerance]

#7 fiji water

Bottled water itself is one of those weird constructs that we, as a modern society, readily accept without question. Here's a natural resource, quite literally the "elixir of life" if you will; yet, there's people that won't drink anything other than bottled water because it's "not clean enough." Those hydro homies wouldn't be caught dead drinking directly from the garden hose, that's for sure.

Although the conception of bottled water as the ultimate source of drinking water is itself already a form of simualcra, Fiji-branded water takes it a step further. Their branding relies heavily on beautiful, highly saturated images of tropical, Oceanic flora to tout its artesian aquifer as the epitome of unadulterated water.

Yet Fiji's water suffers from subpar quality due to contamination from microplastics, BPA, and even arsenic (albeit within legally acceptable limits), making it chemically inferior to filtered tap water. Still more difficult to swallow is the fact that 75% of rural Fijians don't even have access to clean drinking water themselves.

Whatever "real water" is has transcended its original definition and become something that's realer than real.

[illuminerance]

#6: dyson vacuum toys

The British toy company Casdon manufactured a DC05 "Little Helper" model which was a replica of its real, adult-sized vacuums. This first version hit the market in 2000, but newer toy models that reflect new products by the Dyson company are still being made today.

Much like the Lil McDonald's toy phone, this toy manufactures its future customers and creates an image of reality through brand recognition and by introducing toys that "actually work" (albeit with poor suction and barely any useful functionality).

[illuminerance]

#5: the lil mcdonald's happy meal toy phone

The Lil McDonald's promotion which ran in summer 2025 is a fantastic example of simulacra driven by brands which transcends generational experiences.

Baudrillard says there are 4 stages of simulacrum: reflection, perversion, absence, and pure simulacrum, where hyperreality overtakes the real.

Whereas older happy meal toys -- such as the Changeables released in 1987 -- were miniature versions of the food products themselves, this series of new toys are mostly anything but. The toy phone, in particular, stands out to me because it isn't just a facsimile of foodstuff molded in plastic, or an anthropomorphic version thereof like its older cousins from the 80s.

No, it celebrates the absence of reality itself! Kids used to have birthday parties at McDonald's, but the brand itself has tried really hard to reduce its footprint and push takeaway options rather than have people hang out at their stores. They've added kiosks and encouraged mobile ordering to order at so they can hide away all the people that work there, and now they're indoctrinating children with this new paradigm for fast food by way of a plastic toy phone.

Note that the sticker shows 6000 points, which is just enough in rewards to get another Happy Meal. The screen also never finishes loading, which users say is "an accurate representation of the app."

Not only are they manufacturing reality, they're manufacturing their (future) customers too! How's that for hyperreality?

[illuminerance]

#4: the tokyo disney mickey egg

This one is sort of like the Ship of Theseus problem: is something still the "real" copy of something if all of its original parts are replaced?

This famous egg served at Tokyo Disneyland is technically composed of egg whites and egg yolks, but it qualifies as "manufactured reality" as each one is perfectly shaped (and identically sized) because it has been reconfigured in ways which renders it distinct from a typical soft-boiled egg laid by a chicken.

[illuminerance]

#3: click tracks

I'm no professional musician, so I'm not here to debate the usefulness of the click track. But I'll be the first to let everyone know it does qualify as "manufactured reality," and here's why:

The realness of a musical performance hinges upon the ability of the artist to perform in an animated and expressive manner, which reflects both their humanity and emotional connection to the piece.

This sentiment was especially prominent if you look at the scores for unmeasured preludes of the 17th century, which offered limited notation that were suggestive at best when it came to rhythm and meter.

The fact that most bands today use click tracks in live performances (not to mention backing tracks) is a sign that whatever was real about music performance has been replaced, and exists largely as simulacrum.

[illuminerance]

#2: bacon

Bacon! America's favorite breakfast protein...right?

Believe it or not, our breakfasts used to be "light," -- like that of the French -- people would have juice, toast, and coffee, and that would be it. It wasn't fashionable to eat a heavy breakfast.

Then, in the 1920s, the Beech-Nut Packing Company hired a man named Edward Bernays to help with bacon sales.

Bernays' solution was to ask a doctor to write 5,000 other physicians, to see if they agreed that people's bodies lost a lot of calories during sleep and so it would be better if they had "hearty" breakfasts instead of "light" breakfasts. 4,500 out of the 5,000 physicians agreed.

The subsequent PR campaign helpfully suggested that there was no heartier breakfast to be had than bacon and eggs.

The combination was popularized in diners across the country and became a routine part of home consumption as well, thereby entering the realm of "realer than real."

Today, it outperforms all other breakfast proteins, including breakfast sausage, chorizo, and ham, with bacon sales topping out at $6.6 billion, more than triple that of sausage sales which total $2.2 billion.