July 12, 2025

Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation - The Deeper Thinking Podcast

21 minutes

Simulacra and Simulation: Memory, Presence, and the Drift of the Real

For those drawn to philosophical disquiet, symbolic drift, and the quiet collapse of reality into representation.

The Deeper Thinking Podcast is digitally narrated

What happens when experience is no longer remembered as it was lived—but only as it was posted, captioned, or shared? In this episode, we trace the unsettling terrain explored by Jean Baudrillard in Simulacra and Simulation: a condition in which images no longer reflect the real, but replace it. From memory as metadata to love as algorithm, we explore the hyperreal as the world we now inhabit—not behind the screen, but through it.

This isn’t a summary of Baudrillard. It’s a meditation from inside his world. With nods to thinkers like Walter Benjamin, Fredric Jameson, and Marshall McLuhan, we explore how symbolic drift becomes emotional truth, how memory collapses into performance, and how even longing becomes a loop we’ve learned to format.

The simulation doesn’t lie to us. It reshapes us. And this episode attempts not to explain that shift—but to let you feel it.

Reflections

Some thoughts that surfaced through this essay-like episode:

You don’t feel lonely. You feel untranslated.

The real isn’t gone—it’s been resized to fit the feed.

Presence has become performance; memory has become interface.

We don’t remember. We repost.

The simulation doesn’t erase reality. It renders it obsolete.

Sometimes the glitch is the only thing that feels true.

We don’t miss what we’ve lost. We miss the simulation when it stalls.

And still—we scroll.

Why Listen?

Experience Baudrillard’s theory not as summary—but as immersion

Explore the looped logic of memory, media, and self

Engage ideas from Benjamin, Jameson, and McLuhan on media, repetition, and the hyperreal

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Bibliography

Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. University of Michigan Press, 1994.

Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.

Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.

Bibliography Relevance

Jean Baudrillard: Diagnoses the collapse of the real into simulation.

Walter Benjamin: Frames the reproduction of reality as aesthetic and political transformation.

Marshall McLuhan: Illuminates how media shapes consciousness more than content does.

Fredric Jameson: Maps the logic of postmodernism as saturated by simulation and nostalgia.

The real hasn’t disappeared. It’s just been outcompeted by the simulation.

#JeanBaudrillard #Hyperreality #Simulacra #PhilosophyOfMedia #DigitalSelf #FredricJameson #WalterBenjamin #McLuhan #SimulationTheory #TheDeeperThinkingPodcast #MemoryAndMedia #AttentionEconomy

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