Hypernormalization

In a nutshell, this documentary is almost entirely about how our perceptions of the world are shaped, and how often the world we ‘see’ is fake. It is reality twisted by those in power in an effort to gain and maintain control over what people see and, thus, what people do and how they react. This is often perpetrated by the government with a technique called ‘perception management’ that makes reality something to be manipulated to suit their needs (like the Reagan administration’s painting of Gaddafi as a terrorist leader and America as a shining moral beacon in the world meant to fight him). This fake reality can interact with other fake realities and inspire their emergence by others (like the Soviet Union’s portrayal of being great and working when it was falling apart, which led to the US thinking it was stronger than it was). These fake realities have led to problems in their futures (like the extreme emergence of suicide bomber terrorists after their initial use of revenge by Assad years before).  These fake realities arguably led to far more problems than they ‘solved’ and were almost directly responsible for the destabilization of the Middle East and the radical ideas that so directly contradict Islamic teachings taking root there. Even the internet has become a sort of fake reality. We all know not to believe everything we see and read but there is nothing stopping us from living fake lives on the internet. Not only that, but we also know that there are a myriad of programs watching us, what we like and what we do, either to tailor ads or for government surveillance or any number of other things. And yet, it still gives us the power to organize and try for change (seen in particular with the Arab Spring and Occupy Movements). But the ideas of fake realities came to a head in recent politics, too, with people capitalizing on the fact that governments are not often telling the whole truth, or even anything believable. This documentary asserts that these things have all become hypernormal for the world, where fake realities dominate and so often hide the truth, which only leads to more problems. There is some truth to this, in that governments and media can shape what we see and often believe, but personally I hope that as the internet continues to shape our lives, it can do so in a way that brings people together and shares ideas better than it does now.