Hypernormalization

File:Erasing hands.gif

Hypernormalization is a thing that happens all the time on the internet, with varying degrees of lulzworthiness, and is immediately recognizable. However it is very hard to describe, so now it has a handy name for you to use.

Hyperwhat now?

In a nutshell, it's the process by which bullshit is posted on the internet, taken seriously by idiots, and then plowed back into the real world by those idiots telling other idiots, who then get straight on the internet and post even more bullshit about it. This cycle sees the original bullshit get spread and amplified until whatever truth there was in the original bullshit is totally forgotten and no-one can figure out the difference.

It is not unlike the so-called “filter bubble”, in which social media only shows you stuff you are already interested in, so you never encounter anything that disagrees with you. Hypernormalization takes OL into IRL and back into OL forever, in an endless spiral of escalating delusions.

Case study

Moar info: PizzaGate.

Actual photo of Hillary Clinton eating a baby

In 2016, a ludicrous load of old nonsense started circulating online. No-one knows how it started. It might have been the Russians, because apparently everything bad that happens online these days is done by Russia. It was a sprawling mess of a conspiracy theory, which involved Hillary Clinton and her cronies eating babies that were smuggled into the US via pizza restaurants, or something.

This utter bullshit got more and more attention, until eventually one of the bullshit-believers got himself a gun and set out to “self-investigate” the bullshit. He walked into the pizza restaurant where all this evildoing was supposedly taking place, and caused a panic. At some point, he fired his gun. It hit a PC tower rather than a person, and he was arrested.

It then turned out that he was listed on IMDB as an actor. Idiots online immediately assumed that this meant the incident was a staged distraction from the crimes of the baby-eating pizza-lovers. And since his single shot had hit a computer, this obviously mean that this crisis actor had been sent in to destroy evidence that was held on that computer, while simultaneously discrediting everyone who believed this stupid conspiracy theory in the first place. The person who failed to find a conspiracy was now proof that the conspiracy existed.

”Post-truth politics”

Another catchphrase related to hypernormalization. Post-truth politics is the phenomenon in which politicians say stupid things to get headlines, which are reported uncritically by the media, and take on a life of their own when too many people believe them and the politician ends up being forced to pursue policies that they never dreamt would be taken seriously.

2011 Egyptian Revolution

Moar info: Politics of Africa.

This was a make-believe revolution, whipped up by a hotheaded Arab called Wael Ghonim, who may or may not have been CIA working undercover for his employers, Google Inc. The "Revolution" consisted of a string of demands published on a Facebook page, which sparked mass hysteria and ended up toppling the Egyptian government. However, neither Ghonim nor anyone else had any idea of what should replace the government. As a result there was chaos, a military coup, a brief period of Islamic fundamentalist rule, another military coup, and (3 years later) a "free and fair election" that saw the former minister for the army made president with 97% of the vote.

Net result: national devastation with thousands of Egyptians dead, seriously injured or missing, and Egypt itself is still a backwards hellhole, run by wife-flogging religious handchoppers, with a civil liberties record that would make Stalin blush. All thanks to some twat's shitposting.

UK 2016 European Referendum

Moar info: Brexit.

File:How brexit works on twitter by @Liberamentalist.png

Simple, and true

In 2016, plastic-faced asshat UK prime minister David Cameron made the biggest misjudgement of his career. He decided to settle a long-running argument in his own political party, the Tories. That's always a stupid idea, because it's just asking for trouble, but the really stupid bit was that he decided to queer out of any personal danger by asking the electorate to settle it for him. The argument was whether or not the UK should stay in its half-in/half-out membership of the European Union, or pull out altogether.

Cameron thought he could scare the electorate into voting to remain half-in the EU, so - instead of offering a coherent plan for leaving the EU - he essentially offered the electorate a blank contract with the words "Sign Here" at the bottom. In real life, you'd snap the pen in half and run a mile rather than sign such an ominous document, because you would know right away that you were about to get fleeced seven ways 'til Sunday.

What Cameron had forgotten was that there were plenty of eager political minds out there to "fill in" the blank contract for him. And they did, promising the electorate fame, glory, riches, and victory. Whether or not those promises could be fulfilled was never discussed, because the people making these promises only wanted one thing - to quit the EU at any cost. Their reasons were old-fashioned things like being able to control your country's borders, plan your own economy, make your own laws - exactly the sort of things that are very unfashionable these days due to the general fucktardedness of millennials.

As a result of Cameron's feeble planning, the promise of the UK's bright post-European future was spread via Facebook memes targeted at pissed-off boomers, by an obscure marketing company called Cambridge Analytica, which was run by Benedict Cumberbatch.

So, unexpectedly, the electorate was offered a choice between being raepd by Europe till the end of time or giving David Cameron a patriotic smack round his smug plasticky face and making a break for it. They chose the latter. Meanwhile, the faggots who wanted to be in the EU and get shafted by Brussels forever, stayed trapped in their own gay little dream-world on Twitter and were caught completely by surprise when a righteous wave of patriotic fervor delivered a vote to leave the EU. Their butthurt continues to this very day, and their master plan to stop Brexit consists of tweeting goofy photos of Nigel Farage and hashfaggotry like #FBPE, which means they will be taken by an even bigger surprise when Brexit actually happens.

Cameron quit immediately, knowing that he'd created a mess he was too dense to be able to fix. His successor, Theresa May, has attempted to bullshit her way out of the European Union while holding the Tory party together - because far from settling the party's disagreements about the EU, the referendum actually deepened them and made them far more bitter instead. Meanwhile, at least half of Britain's electorate are about to get shat on from a great height, whatever happens, which means that Brexit will be a rich source of online drama for at least another decade.

Origins

Hypernormalization has existed as a word for several decades. It was originally applied to the fake version of reality in which citizens of the former Soviet Union lived, where there were no food shortages or power-cuts, and public services were faultlessly efficient 24/7. Needless to say, the stark reality all around those citizens was precisely the opposite, even though the media and government insisted that everything was wonderful.

The word is now in circulation in the West, since it was dusted off by rambling video-collage artist and so-called “documentary-maker” Adam Curtis, in his 2015 film entitled Hypernormalization.

Videos

Wael Ghonim has learned nothing from the bloodbath he caused Tweetcrimewave Previous Video | Next Video

See also

• Circular logic
• Hyperreality
• Juggaloes - an ED article that the FBI relied upon in a threat assessment about the Juggalo Menace
• Fake News
• Recursion
• Trolls Trolling Trolls

External links

• List of Wikipedia bullshit that was cuntpasted into news articles, which were then used as "reliable sources" for the same bullshit on Wikipedia itself
• "We need to go back and investigate Comet Ping Pong shooter, Edgar Welch, and his parents. The MSM use this incident to make us look nuts" (Reddit, August 2018) (Archived: 1 2)