Authentic experiences become inauthentic the moment you begin to think of them in terms of authenticity or inauthenticity. Thus, it seems as if living authentically is impossible in an age where we’ve conceived of that distinction. Is there a way out of this trap? I’d argue no, there is not, as we have embraced the simulacrum completely. Experiences hold no grip on reality if not snapped by a smartphone camera or uploaded to YouTube. Without likes, without it being facebooked, an event might as well not have happened.

Even more, with pervasive recording, documentation and ritual re-enactment, each event is only a replay of some other event that has already occurred. Nostalgia now projects into the future and obliterates all before it. We experience nostalgia for an event that hasn’t yet occurred, and if said event is not recorded and re-enacted and reviewed on a screen, both the apprehension and the retroactive experience of the nostalgic miasmic brume is denied, destroyed, and an event becomes a non-event, as this simulation of the simulation is now required for an experience to be considered valid, and to have an epistemic status in our discernment and construction of reality.