Hypernormalisation: How We Became Trapped in a Fake World
An exploration of control, consumerism, and the fading hope for real freedom
I watched the 2016 BBC documentary Hypernormalisation by Adam Curtis, and suddenly, everything clicked. The disparate dots in my mind connected, and I realized that the world we’re living in is, quite simply, fake.
The reality I was born into was abandoned in the 1970s. Bankers and politicians rewrote the rules, crafting a softer, more palatable world. It’s a world where we don’t question — where we consume. We’re handed the illusion of free will and taught to accept absurdity as the norm.
Today, trust has eroded because everything feels carefully engineered to keep us divided and distracted.
What Is Hypernormalisation?
The term hypernormalisation was coined by Alexei Yurchak, an anthropology professor born in Leningrad. It describes a societal phenomenon in which people recognize that a system—whether economic, political, or otherwise—is failing but continues to act as if it’s functional. Over time, this “fakeness” becomes normal, accepted, and even expected.
It’s not a stretch to say that we live in a hypernormalised world today. If you have money, you’re insulated in a perfect consumerist bubble. Buy now, forget tomorrow.
- Climate change? Elon Musk will save us
- Women’s reproductive rights? Just swipe right for a dream wedding
- The East Palestine crisis? Keep gaming on your Xbox
- Bird flu? Let’s argue about banning TikTok instead
- Gaza? Trust in Trump to solve that problem
Everything is a bait-and-switch, a deliberate refocusing of our minds for their benefit.
The Curious Case of Deoxy.org
There was a time when the internet was wild and free — a place for unfiltered exploration. Back then, we built our websites in raw HTML, uploaded them via FTP, and formed web rings. It was inefficient, yes, but also pure freedom.
In that era, I stumbled upon deoxy.org, a counter-culture hub dedicated to drugs, mind expansion, and questioning societal norms. It introduced me to Alan Watts, antiwork manifestos, and ideas about environmental justice. Deoxy was a bastion of free thought — a warning against hypernormalisation.
But by 2017, the site was gone. Today, it’s a hollowed-out shell likely owned by an SEO company chasing clicks. What was once a beacon of resistance now feels like a ghost manipulated by the same forces it once opposed.
We Lost the Internet
Deoxy wasn’t alone. The early internet was filled with quirky, individually-run sites like Geocities, where people created and shared without algorithms or corporate oversight. Over time, these decentralized spaces gave way to social media platforms and centralized silos.
These platforms traded the illusion of choice for control. They demanded our data, our lives, and our thoughts, and we complied.
We’ve lost the internet. Today, it’s dominated by corporations that don’t care about us. We live and die by their algorithms. Occasionally, they elevate one of us to stardom, but it’s only to keep the illusion alive — that we matter.
We don’t. To them, we’re just numbers on a financial ledger.
Hypernormalisation and the Power Game
Hypernormalisation thrives on the invisible hand of money and power. It’s a self-sustaining cycle where money begets power and power begets money. Bankers and politicians understand this all too well.
Why do politicians lie and cheat to get elected? Because the money demands it. Why do banks exert so much influence over politics? Because they want more power.
These are the architects of our hypernormalised world. They create the diversions, rewrite the rules, and keep us occupied. You can only play their game if you have money — and only if you follow their rules.
The Fediverse: Our Last Hope — or Another Illusion?
Decentralization and the Fediverse might seem like the antidote to hypernormalisation. I’ve written before about how it could empower us to regain control of our data and the internet. But will it?
It reminds me of Occupy Wall Street — a movement that started with potential but crumbled under contradictions. I visited Occupy in 2011 and saw it devolve into self-serving chaos. Authors sold books, vegans preached dietary dogma, and participants exploited the movement for personal gain. The system they hated swallowed them whole.
Will decentralization suffer the same fate? Probably. The invisible hand of money and power corrupts all things. Even now, decentralized platforms risk becoming tools for division, hate, and consumer exploitation. How soon will the Fediverse be co-opted by the very forces it seeks to resist?
How soon is now?
Hypernormalisation isn’t just a state we’ve stumbled into — it’s a carefully constructed reality designed to keep us docile, divided, and distracted.
From the algorithms that dictate our lives to the institutions that perpetuate this illusion, we’re caught in a loop of money, power, and manipulation. But the question remains: will we continue to accept this fabricated world, or will we dare to imagine something better?
The choice is ours — if we’re willing to take it. After all, every system, no matter how entrenched, only persists because we allow it to. How soon will we choose to see the cracks in their façade? How soon is now?
Follow Me
