Trauma Influencers #20

This project satirizes the commodification of trauma within the attention economy.

In On Photography and Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag argues that repeated exposure to images of suffering can numb our capacity for genuine empathy.

Drawing on contemporary social media practices and Jean Baudrillard’s concept of hyperreality, wherein simulations—staged or digitally constructed—supplant the “real,” this project intentionally blurs the line between authentic and artificial narratives in the age of AI.

Between the superficial status posturing and the profoundly disturbing fictionalized events, something feels all too familiar, all too “real.”

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