The Pathology of Mutual Incomprehension

HOW ONLINE ILLUSION FORMS U.S POLICY

Division is entrenched in today’s media environment. Every point is made in opposition to something else. A supermarket product becomes a culture-war flashpoint. An idle comment on an Instagram Live turns into a referendum on free speech. Even natural disasters are ideologically controversial. Arguments today are presented, smugly, to provoke outrage from imaginary opponents on the other side of the fence.

And yet, we engage. Our attention is fed by emotion, and algorithms know this well. As philosopher Jean Baudrillard warned, we live in a world “where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.”

As social media becomes increasingly tailored to the users’ tastes and demands, where our echo chambers start and where they end are becoming an increasingly blurred difficulty of the digital age. Anti-intellectualism is abundant on both sides of the political divide, so-called news sources look to inform in a way that provokes, even if it means deviating further and further from the truth.

This article will explore the reality of taking these untruths to their natural conclusion. When the myths of online narratives are hijacked by political actors and used to form policy, what does this policy look like – and what are the real-world implications of being policed by such laws?

Part 1. Hyperreality and the Algorithmic Spectacle

Baudrillard’s idea of hyperreality can help explain why online disputes feel both intense and, when we take a closer look, strangely hollow. Hyperreality describes a condition where representations or simulations of reality become more real to people than the underlying reality itself. These representations—what Baudrillard calls simulacra—evolve over time. As one copy replaces the last, the final product becomes a distortion of reality.

This concept helps explain why everything we see online feels emotionally charged and divisive: we’re reacting to curated, stylised fragments that have been engineered to provoke us. A single video clip is captioned, remixed, and embedded in a meme; the original context fades while the emotional payload intensifies. What remains is not an event, but a symbol optimised for outrage.

Baudrillard developed this theory well before the age of social media, but its relevance has only grown. A viral moment now travels through multiple layers of mediation—edited, subtitled, remixed, recontextualised—until it fits into the narratives we expect. The TikTok stitch, the ‘ratio’ reply, and the algorithmic suggestion all filter the real into something tailored. By the time we are able to react, we are not engaging with the original event but with a version curated to fit our taste. The simulation feels more appealing, more real than the thing it simulates.

Part 2. Narrative Construction

In a hyperreal online space, far removed from the constraints of truth, misinformation spreads with ease. The algorithm’s main concern isn’t the distinction between verified fact and baseless claim; it is driven by engagement. Across all types of content, claims build on claims with little tether to reality.

Political content, like everything else, is shaped by platforms that prioritise simplicity, speed, and emotionality. The algorithm boosts what provokes. Nuance is lost. Polarising content wins. Political events are no longer digested slowly or debated thoughtfully—they’re sensationalised, flattened into viral clips and memes that serve more to affirm existing bias than challenge it.

In this environment, the sensational becomes structural. Narratives spiral. In extreme cases, they snowball into full-blown conspiracy theories.

A nationwide issue such as a housing shortage may be explained through the framework of the Great Replacement Theory—immigrants being intentionally brought into Western Europe to supplant native populations, all orchestrated by George Soros. An election win by your opposing party is inconceivable, and as such proves the deep state cabal of pedophiles is pulling the nation’s strings. In some cases, even the Holocaust is denied outright.

Conspiracy theories like these provide an easy explanation and solution to complex problems. Many are far-fetched and even laughable at times. The reality, however, is that these narratives are seeping into mainstream debate; they are being platformed by talk shows and podcasts that rely on outrage—they are given, and gaining, credibility.

The result is not merely confusion but multiplication. There are now dozens of simultaneous realities competing for dominance. One political event can spark a hundred different interpretations, each one reinforced by its own community and media ecosystem. This is hyperreality in action: not one distorted version of the truth, but infinite competing simulations.

“The narcissism of minor differences that is the hallmark of healthy democratic politics becomes the pathology of mutual incomprehension.”
— Andrew Potter

Nowhere is this mutual incomprehension more entrenched than in American politics. The binary landscape—left vs. right, red vs. blue—creates an ideal environment for tribal narratives to flourish. There is no middle ground. There is only us and them. Is it any surprise that Trump, the veteran of Reality TV, has mastered this divisive playbook?

This binary logic pairs perfectly with populist rhetoric. Populism thrives on a Manichean worldview: the people are good, the elites are evil. Complex problems are recast as simple betrayals with easy solutions. The populist approach of the ‘common-sense’ fix sells because it is fast, emotionally satisfying, and designed for spectacle. In a media landscape built to reward emotion over explanation, the populist’s clarity feels like truth.

These divisive narratives don’t just splinter dialogue, they set the stage for something more potent: belief systems that seek power, that reshape institutions, and that, through repetition, begin to manifest as political reality.

Political bases of support will be built on these fringe narratives for those yet to find representation. The surge of populists both challenging and entering government across the West utilises compelling faux pas narratives to gain power. Playing into the idea that there is an enemy within, a corrupt deep state, and/or a threat of foreign interests, gives something to fight back against.

Importantly, these villains do not vanish after election night. They are too valuable. Once in office, the narrative persists as a justification for exceptional measures: new committees, emergency powers, sweeping executive orders. Policy is drafted to ‘combat’ threats that were largely conjured in the comment threads. The simulation seeps into statute. Hyperreal anxieties form into very real laws, budgets, and prosecutions. In the process, power centralises—and the system begins to mirror the dystopia that the original fiction warned about.

Part 3. Hyperstition

Nick Land coined the term hyperstition to describe a fiction that makes itself real through collected belief. Unlike a superstition, which remains inert regardless of belief, a hyperstition gains power through repetition and uptake. It doesn’t need to be true to matter—only believed, shared, and acted upon.

In this way, a hyperstition is less like a prophecy and more like a viral code. The more it’s repeated, the more it shapes attitudes, actions, and institutions. A fiction becomes policy not because it is verified, but because it is treated as if it were true. Confidence, not evidence, drives its trajectory.

“Superstitions are merely false beliefs, but hyperstitions—by their very existence as ideas—function causally to bring about their own reality. Capitalist economics is extremely sensitive to hyperstition, where confidence acts as an effective tonic.”
— Nick Land

The stock market offers a good analogy: share prices often rise on hype, rumour, or sentiment, rather than hard data. If enough people believe a company will succeed, the price climbs. The belief itself changes reality. The same applies to political or cultural narratives in a hyperreal media ecosystem.

A conspiracy theory can become hyperstitional when it starts to affect governance. A fringe belief gains traction, shapes voting patterns, prompts investigations, inspires legislation. The imagined threat becomes institutionalised. A symbolic narrative transforms into material consequences that reflect the nature of the initial imagined threat. The January 6th insurrection offers a clear example. Conspiratorial narratives positioned Trump as the last defence against a corrupt establishment. Those involved in the Capitol breach believed they were saving democracy.

But the paradox is this: by “defending” democracy through force, they destabilised it. Their actions gave the impression that American democracy could no longer self-regulate. In the aftermath, public confidence plummeted – it has remained low ever since. A Gallup poll recorded the lowest ever satisfaction with U.S. democracy at 28% in 2022. Pew found that only 26% of Republicans had strong confidence that votes would be counted accurately. Belief in a broken system helped to create a broken system.

In early 2025, Elon Musk was appointed as a ‘special adviser’ to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Though not formally confirmed, Musk wielded wide-reaching influence. His appointment stemmed from a populist belief in bureaucratic rot. In seeking to fix a system deemed unaccountable, Trump’s administration installed a powerful actor outside traditional oversight—realising the very scenario they claimed to oppose. The system they feared came to exist, not in spite of their actions, but because of them.

Part 4. The Production of Violence

Populist narratives often frame politics not as negotiation, but as combat. This framing demands a villain—an entity that threatens the people and must be opposed with force.

In this context, violence itself can become hyperstitional. The narrative imagines a hostile force. That belief justifies repression or pre-emptive action. The resulting unrest is then pointed to as proof that the original threat was real. Fiction breeds violence, and violence confirms the fiction.

You can see this logic everywhere in contemporary populism. The belief in an ‘invasion’ by undocumented migrants becomes the justification for mass ICE raids. When protests erupt in response, images of chaos and Mexican flags are used to imply that the invasion is real.

In June 2025, this dynamic played out in Los Angeles: ICE raids triggered unrest; the unrest was militarised by the deployment of U.S. Marines; and the optics—Latino protesters facing down federal troops—mapped perfectly onto a pre-existing narrative of internal war. The belief preceded the event. The event made the belief appear true.

But the cycle doesn’t stop there. The perceived violence of one group justifies further repression by the other. Protesters, branded as violent extremists, face crackdowns. Those crackdowns provoke more resistance. The narrative loops—each swing reinforcing the last, each act of violence seen not as escalation, but as vindication.

What’s important is that the belief system constructs the conditions of its own confirmation. When narrative frames opponents as traitors or infiltrators, they create a climate where extreme measures seem necessary. When those measures provoke backlash, it is taken as evidence that the system is under siege. The story writes itself into the world. In this way, violence becomes both product and proof of the populist imaginary.

This isn’t just about one protest or one policy—it’s a broader mechanism of how hyperstition functions when filtered through a Manichean political lens. Populism thrives on the simplicity of conflict. Consider any topic from the ‘culture wars’—it often revolves around portraying one group as a threat to your community, children, or livelihood.

These narratives invite confrontation. And when violence comes—whether from the state or the street—it doesn’t disrupt the narrative. It completes it.