Maximum Satisfaction: A Postmodern Exploration of Hyperreality, Simulacra, and the Digital Commodification of Experience
Creators: name: Read, Simon
Publisher: name: Cardiff Metropolitan University
Year: 2025
Subjects: classificationCode: 360201
subject: Creative writing (incl. scriptwriting)

description:   
This thesis explores how digital algorithms and media saturation have increasingly mediated and commodified late capitalist society, resulting in a hyperreal environment where the lines between reality and representation are blurred. Central to this study is the concept of hyperreality, particularly as articulated by Jean Baudrillard, whose theory of simulacra demonstrates how representations often supplant reality in the contemporary world. Through the lens of postmodern thought and the work of theorists like Fredric Jameson, Slavoj Žižek, and Terry Eagleton, this thesis examines how capitalist imperatives and media distortions shape cultural narratives, often reinforcing existing power structures.
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At the core of the thesis is my novella, <em>Maximum Satisfaction</em>, which functions as a creative critique of these issues. The novella employs absurdity, fragmentation, and juxtaposition to depict a world dominated by digital algorithms, not only curating consumer behaviours but, also, profoundly impacting social identities and interpersonal relationships. Techniques derived from Dada and Neo-Dada movements, such as fragmentation and collage, are reinterpreted to create a postmodern text, reflecting the disjointed experience of life in an algorithm-led digital society where consumer goods, advertisements, and even personal identities are commodified and reduced to symbols in a hyperreal marketplace.
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<em>Maximum Satisfaction</em> uses cyclical dialogue, nonlinear time, and overlaying digital rules/functions onto non-digital environments to convey the destabilisation of reality perceived in the digital age. Characters find themselves in absurd and illogical situations, mirroring the disorientation caused by social media algorithms, targeted advertisements, and the commodification of personal data. The story critiques how consumerism encourages individuals to define their worth through material accumulation and self-promotion, particularly via social media, where identities are often meticulously curated to present a consumable version of the self.
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This thesis also draws connections between historical movements like Dada/Neo-Dada and the present-day critique of digital capitalism. While Dada artists reacted to the absurdity of World War I, <em>Maximum Satisfaction</em> reflects the absurdities of contemporary digital life. By recycling and recontextualizing Dada techniques, this postmodern novella addresses how algorithms, social media, and consumer culture shape and distort modern realities. It explores the ways in which media technologies—driven by capitalist objectives—foster alienation and disconnect individuals from authentic experiences, creating a fragmented and commodified world where authenticity and meaning are constantly in question.
Ultimately, this thesis highlights the need for critical engagement with the forces of late capitalism that shape our perceptions and experiences, calling attention to how art and literature can both replicate and resist the commodification of life in the digital age. Through this exploration, <em>Maximum Satisfaction</em> emerges as a postmodern text, reflecting the complexities of navigating a world increasingly dominated by mediated and commodified experiences.