Virtuality Quotes

“The deprogramming of language will be the work of language itself.
The deregulation of the system will be the work of the system itself.
The derealization of the world will be the work of the world itself.
The derealization of the world will be the work of the world itself.
Such is the prophetico-inert: prophecy fulfilling itself.
On closer examination, it was the very tenor of the revolutionary slogan: the workers will liberate themselves. Except that this contained a dangerous mystification: it merely opened on to the practico-inert, on to the liberation of work as an end in itself.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Fragments

“HOW MUCH REALITY CAN YOU TOLERATE?
FAKE THE REST!

CREATE THE REALITY YOU WANT TO LIVE IN”
― Vineet Raj Kapoor

“Why might there not be as many real worlds as imaginary ones? Why a single real world? Why such an exception? Truth to tell, the real world, among all the other possible ones, is unthinkable, except as dangerous superstition. We must break with it as critical thought once broke (in the name of the real!) with religious superstition. Thinkers, one more effort!

In any case, the two orders of thought are irreconcilable. They each follow their course without merging; at best they slide over each other like tectonic plates, and occasionally their collision or subduction creates fault lines into which reality rushes. Fate is always at the intersection of these two lines of force. Similarly, radical thought is at the violent intersection of meaning and non-meaning, of truth and non-truth, of the continuity of the world and the continuity of the nothing.”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Perfect Crime

“However, we must not look on this domination of the Virtual as something inevitable. Above all, we must not take the Virtual for a 'reality' (definitely going too far!) and apply the categories of the real and the rational to it.(...)”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact

“Here lies the total abstraction and the source of all domination: in the breakdown of the dual relation.
The strategy of domination is, indeed, to ensure that, through all the techniques of communication, through inescapable, streaming information, there can no longer be any response. It is a domination by signs empty of meaning. But, on the other side, there is an equal indifference and blank resistance.”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact

“The stock market crash finds a continuation in the takeover frenzy. It is no longer stocks and shares being bought, but companies being bought up. A virtual effervescence is created, with a potential impact on economic restructuring which, in spite of what is said, is purely speculative. The hope is that this enforced circulation will produce a broker's commission — exactly as on the Stock Exchange . Not even an objective profit exactly: the profit from speculation is not exactly surplus value, and what is at stake here is certainly not what is at stake in classical capitalism.
Speculation, like poker or roulette, has its own runaway logic, a chainreaction logic, a process of intensification [Steigerung], in which the thrill of the game and of bidding up the stakes plays a considerable role. This is why there is no point criticizing it on the basis of economic logic (this is what makes these phenomena so exciting: the economic being overtaken by a random, vertiginous form).
The game is such as to become suicidal: big companies end up buying back their own shares, which is nonsensical from the economic point of view: they end up mounting takeover bids for themselves! But this is all part of the same madness. In the case of takeovers, companies are not traded - do not circulate - as real capital, as units of production; they are traded as a quantity of shares, as a mere probability of production , which is enough to create a virtual movement within the economy.
That this will be a prelude to other crashes is highly probable, for the same reasons as apply in the case of stocks and shares: things are circulating too quickly. We might imagine labour itself - labour power — moving into this speculative orbit too. The worker would no longer sell his labour power for a wage, as in the classic capitalist process, but sell his job itself, his employment. And he would buy others and sell them on again, as their stock went up or down on the Labour Exchange (the term would then assume its full meaning). It would not be so much a question of doing the jobs as keeping them circulating, creating a virtual movement of employment which substituted for the real movement of labour.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Screened Out

“There comes a time when one has to make up one’s mind and choose which side one is on. The catoptric universe is a reality which can give the impression of virtuality, whereas the semiotic universe is a virtuality which can give the impression of reality.”
― Umberto Eco, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language

“One understands, then, why the Americans make such a show of their debt. The initiative is supposed to shame the State for its bad management and alert the citizens to an imminent collapse of the finances and public services. But the exorbitant scale of the figures robs them of all meaning. It is, in fact, just a massive advertising exercise and, indeed, the luminous billboard looks for all the world like a triumphant stock market index that has broken all records. The population contemplate it with the fascination they might accord to a world record (though few gather in front of the Beaubourg digital clock to see the run-in to the end of the century). At the same time, the people are collectively in the same situation as the Tupolev test pilot who right up to the last second could see his aircraft nose dive and crash into the ground on his internal video circuit. Did he, by some last-minute reflex, glance at the image as he died? He could have imagined himself living out his last moments in virtual reality. Did the image survive the man if only for a fraction of a second? Or was it the other way about? Does virtual reality survive the real world's catastrophic end?”
― Jean Baudrillard, Screened Out

“весь наш світ — то фейсбук їбучий
нас в реалі нема ні грама
так і здохнемо ми в фейсбуці
й закопають нас в інстаграмі
ми — зашквар цифрового коду
ми — туман алгоритмів сраних
наші душі — це два смартфони
дві зарядки і два екрани”
― Yuri Izdryk, Naked One

“Ogni distinzione tra reale e virtuale, quando si tratta dell'interiorità delle persone, è quindi prima di tutto inutile, perché impedisce di capire l'altrə e non genera alcun incontro, ed è in seconda istanza dannosa, perché stabilisce una gerarchia di valore tra le esperienze, distinguendole in vere e false anche a prescindere da cosa ne pensi chi le ha vissute.”
― Michela Murgia, God Save the Queer: Catechismo femminista

“Trovo sempre sconcertante quando qualcuno mi dice: «Non bisogna credere a tutto ciò che si vede sui social network, perché spesso non corrispondono alla realtà». Il problema dell'autenticità non è capire quanto il mio profilo corrisponda alla realtà, ma quanto la presunta realtà corrisponda davvero a me, a quello che sono.
Se una persona con un handicap crea un'identità digitale che l'handicap non lo ha e stabilisce relazioni, sta producendo una realtà falsata o ne sta ipotizzando una piú autentica rispetto a sé? Se una persona che appartiene a un'etnia razzializzata si inventa un'identità digitale grazie alla quale le diventano possibili legami con persone che altrimenti non si relazionerebbero mai a lei, sta mentendo o sta producendo una distorsione creativa nella società razzista in cui vive? Se una donna nata in un corpo maschile aggira la disforia di genere attraverso un'identità digitale che corrisponde al genere in cui si riconosce, possiamo parlare di inganno oppure siamo davanti a una realtà piú sincera? Dalla risposta a queste domande dipende molta della nostra capacità di restare uman3 negli ambiti sempre piú postumani del tempo che le nostre vite stanno già attraversando.”
― Michela Murgia, God Save the Queer: Catechismo femminista