No Cover Image

Journal article 299 views 39 downloads

Applied Baudrillard: From the Virtual Economy of Metaverses, NFTs, and Deepfakes, to a New Nihilism and Hatred of Capitalism

Richard Smith Orcid Logo

Journal of Communication Inquiry

Swansea University Author: Richard Smith Orcid Logo

  • 70240.VoR.pdf

    PDF | Version of Record

    © The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License.

    Download (278.45KB)

Check full text

DOI (Published version): 10.1177/01968599251378134

Abstract

Jean Baudrillard’s (1929-2007) theoretical writings are applied to an examination of today’s global virtual economy and society. New advances in virtual culture which flourished during and after the Covid-19 pandemic – esp., metaverses (immersive virtual worlds), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and deep...

Full description

Published in: Journal of Communication Inquiry
ISSN: 0196-8599 1552-4612
Published: SAGE Publications 2025
Online Access: Check full text

URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa70240
Abstract: Jean Baudrillard’s (1929-2007) theoretical writings are applied to an examination of today’s global virtual economy and society. New advances in virtual culture which flourished during and after the Covid-19 pandemic – esp., metaverses (immersive virtual worlds), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and deepfakes (synthetic media) – are discussed to show the prescience of Baudrillard’s theory for how our global consumer society of the image is now defined by the problem of simulation. Baudrillard is shown to have theorised important trends and phenomenon in our contemporary global hyperculture that have hitherto been neglected: non-communication, anti-work, and anti-consumption are, among others, explained as developing phenomena because they are pathologies of a new nihilism, a hatred of capitalism, that is not realised through destruction, but through the simulation and deterrence that now defines contemporary global culture and society.
Keywords: Baudrillard, Nihilism, Deepfakes, Metaverses, NFTs
College: Faculty of Science and Engineering
Funders: Swansea University

Similar Items