Plague Journal, Another Thorn
Say: I am real, this is real, the world is real, and nobody laughs.
But say: this is a simulacrum*, you are only a simulacrum, this war is a simulacrum, and everybody bursts out laughing. With a condescending and yellow laughter, or perhaps a convulsive one, as if it was a childish joke or an obscene invitation. Anything which belongs to the order of simulacrum is obscene or forbidden, similar to that which belongs to sex or death.
However, our belief in reality and evidence is far more obscene. Truth is what should be laughed at.
One may dream of a culture where everyone bursts into laughter when someone says: this is true, this is real.
— excerpt Radical Thought by Jean Baudrillard
*Something that replaces reality with its simulation. A simulacrum, no matter how skillfully done, is not the real thing. The word gained an extended sense emphasizing the superficiality or insubstantiality of a thing. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real. The primary examples are psychosomatic illness and Disneyland.
