Four Stages of Simulation

Submission 6,619

About

Four Stages of Simulation refers to steps outlined in the 1981 book Simulacra and Simulation written by French philosopher Jean Baudrillard. The stages caught on as a meme format, usually used as an illustration of memes in their original forms until their "final stage" in which the representation bears no relation to the source material. The meme first appeared in 2018 and began to gain popularity in 2020.

Origin

On 1981, the book titled Simulacres et Simulation (Eng. Simulacra and Simulation) written by Jean Baudrillard was published in French, and on 1983 published in English^[1]. In the book, explaining the four stages of the sign-order as follows:

In the first case, the image is a good appearance – representation is of the sacramental order. In the second, it is an evil appearance – it is of the order of maleficence. In the third, it plays at being an appearance – it is of the order of sorcery. In the fourth, it is no longer of the order of appearances, but of simulation.

On May 1st, 2018, Twitter^[2] user @quincognito_ uploaded the earliest edit using Baudrillard's four stages in which it was used to illustrate the development of memes such as Drakeposting, galaxy brain, Distracted Boyfriend, Gru's plan, and many more. The tweet received more than 2,900 retweets and 9,100 likes in four years (shown below).

Spread

The edit by @quincognito did not catch on significantly until 2020. For example, on September 20th, 2020, Twitter^[3] user @andreeavr uploaded an edit in the same format, which only received 4 retweets and 19 likes (authorship unconfirmed). On November 8th, 2021, Facebook^[4] page Philosophy Matters reposted the image and received more than 4,700 reactions and 3,000 shares (shown below, left).

Prior to December 23rd, 2020, Twitter user @JanuszMonke uploaded an edit using black Wojaks. The tweet was removed due to the account's suspension. On December 23rd, 2020, KnowYourMeme^[5] staff Philipp uploaded the image to the site, where it received more than 9,400 views in two years (shown below, right).

As the meme format began to spread, it first became popular in communities focusing on philosophy, where the source material was more recognizable. This meme uploaded on October 7th, 2020 was posted in Reddit's^[6] /r/PhilosophyMemes by /u/meters_and_liters, where it earned approximately one hundred upvotes after posting (seen below).