Possibilities opened up by new media technologies hold that culture no longer copies the real but produces it. The real is an effect of television, computer screens, stereo headsets, Virtual Reality goggles, etc. This primacy of signs leads on to the development of simulation , the process whereby representations of things come to replace the things being represented. Signs mask reality.
Signs mask the absence of reality.
Objects that reach this fourth level of signification are called simulacra . The process leads to mediated quasi-interaction due to lack of real interaction betwen people. V. Baudrillard puts the emphasis on discourse , rhetoric, etc. rather than substance and action. However, America isn't the only example of this trend, only the most advanced example. In semiotic terms, signs have been severed from the object, idea, etc.