In Part 1, Bob begins by explaining the terms “the weird” and “the eerie” and how these literary concepts have helped to fuel the social imagination; as well as the tricky issue of how one discerns between ‘fiction’ and ‘reality’. With the help of philosophical concepts such as ‘the hyperreal’ and simulacra taken from Baudrillard, as well as other concepts from French philosophers such as Deleuze, Guattari, and Lyotard, Bob discusses the effects of signs, symbols, and other images on our understanding of what’s ‘real’, as well as the dissolving boundaries between ‘the real’ and ‘the artificial’.
This all takes us into the area of hyperstition, the CCRU, and a case study that is a good example of a hyperstition found in the Slederman character, and later incident in 2014 involving Slenderman where two girls come to believe that he is a real entity, attempting to kill their friend because of it. Bob also talks about how such a character becomes implanted in our collective consciousness through digital interactions such as memes, and later becomes a part of our cultural history. Bob also touches on the concept of acceleration, which he later expands upon in part 2.
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