The Rural Simulacrum, “Lifestyle Content”, and the Lost Referent
your rural hometown is a simulation, surprise!
Earlier this week I was reading an edited volume of chapters on “urbanormativity” (let’s pretend I did this for fun instead of out of obligation for my first year research project which I am slightly behind on). As I was reading I came across a term I had never heard of before: the rural simulacrum. How tantalizing and fun to say! I then quickly abandoned any intention of “getting stuff done” and dove headfirst into the simulacrum.
Now before getting to the fun stuff I have to unpack a little bit so bear with me. In the edited volume Studies in Urbanormativity: Rural Community in Urban Society, the authors (Gregory Fulkerson and Alexander Thomas, sociologists) are arguing that urban living has become so normalized that perceptions of rurality are increasingly being dictated from the city center outward, despite the fact that our modern conceptions of “urban” life have really only been around for a very small fraction of recorded human history. “Urbanormativity” suggests that this view of the urban as a cultural and commercial center is not only uniquely modern but has created very distinct beliefs about the possibilities and capabilities of the rural land and its inhabitants, resulting in a sort of “othering” that tends to portray the city as “progressive” and the countryside as “backward”. Thus contemporary views of the “rural” are defined either by what they lack in relation to the city or what they offer directly to the city, in turn being devoid of any intrinsic or inherent value.
Don’t get me wrong, I definitely do not subscribe to this generalization that rural areas have no inherent cultural value or that their inhabitants have no agency in the way they develop. Unfortunately though, this is a substack newsletter so in order to make my point I have to dance with the devil a little and make over-simplifying statements, sorry! Though I found the volume itself to lack nuance and be a bit euro-centric, it did pose some interesting ideas about the developmental exchange between urban “centers” and rural “peripheries”. Specifically this idea that urbanites are defining the value of the “rural” and in doing so producing and reproducing it with the result of creating a “simulacrum,” a/k/a: a copy of an imitation or a copy of thing that no longer actually exists.
The rural simulacrum refers to a highly idealized version of rurality crafted within the urban center for the purposes of catering to the urban vision of the rural. For instance, it would emphasize the rural as a space for leisure, relaxation, outdoor activity, and art. The intervention of this idea within urban development is that rather than simply making an argument that rural peripheries are developing in ways that cater to people with just like, a lot of money, (because duh, capitalism!) the simulacrum suggests that rural areas are developing against an ideal of its own self created by outsiders (but still for the purpose of attracting wealth because duh, capitalism!)
It is a particularly ironic phenomenon considering that, like the authors suggest, urbanites value the perceived authentic, far-flung, escapism of the countryside. The edenic, cottage-core, Little Women of it all, as it were. What is less valued are the impoverished bits: the trailer parks, the dilapidated storefronts, the feral cats, the rampant drug use, the oh so many parking lots, etc. The rural simulacrum is therefore a copy of a reference rather than a reality. It is all the positive things distilled down to their core but untethered to the negative which sustain them. The value of the simulacra comes from a perception of a reality that is devoid of any sort of functionalism or authenticity, leading the whole project to ring hollow.
There was a familiarity in the argument. Capitalizing on the things that are culturally valuable and discarding or downplaying the inconsistencies. Constructing a community based on “what mass culture considers desirable” until no semblance of the original remains. Attempting to reproduce reality based on a version of reality that never truly existed. Pretty bleak but also extremely enticing to consider in our current digital climate.
In reading through this my mind immediately went to “lifestyle influencers”, a subset of online “content creators” showcasing their day-to-day lives, often highlighting themselves doing traditionally “mundane” activities such as cleaning, cooking, running errands, working out etc. There is admittedly an addictive quality to watching someone do all of the banal things that you either can’t or don’t feel like doing. It is aspirational, in that way. A carefully curated body cleaning a carefully curated home or cooking a carefully curated meal. The beige tones diminishing the strain of looking at a screen, lo-fi synth slowly washing through our bodies straight to the cozy center of the brain. We do not see their mortgage interest statement, or the credit card bill, or the prescription medication, or the bags under their eyes, or the expired ketchup packets accumulating in the refrigerator. Unless of course, they do a fridge clean out! This brand of content has created what I’ll term here as the “lifestyle simulacrum”.
Where the rural and lifestyle simulacrums intersect is in the creation of a highly idealized, highly sanitized version of reality into which an outsider or a “viewer” can escape. The urban outsider escapes to the rural in search of rest, rejuvenation, and leisure. They seek the physical benefits of the natural environment without the possibility of living amongst it. Like the urbanites, digital lifestyle influencers produce an aspirational version of reality for a viewer. They position certain elements of their life in ways that sterilize routine, effectively severing negativity from the process of consumption. In both simulacra, the outsider or the viewer is never involved in the actual process of constructing the reality. Though the creator is responsible for constructing and reproducing the reality, the value is ultimately determined and assigned to by an outside participant, who’s only contribution is their attention to it.
Of course there are valid differences, especially since one deals in physical space and the other in digital. There is definitely also room to bring gender into this, since so many lifestyle influencers are women (but Anne Helen Peterson has done the heavy lifting here). The overall premise seems to stand though. Digital lifestyle “creators” produce content that emulates a version of reality that only truly exists in the form of content from other “creators.” Sure they may be filming in a physical home, separate from that of another creator, but the mimicry of popular style and trends homogenizes lifestyle to the extent that the value of one creator’s reality aids in assigning worth to another’s. The effect is a production and reproduction of values seeking to capture an original reference but instead missing the mark and recreating the simulacrum over and over again.
Jean Baudrillard wrote about simulations and simulacra in the 1980s. He argued that reality altogether was a simulation since humans could really only ever describe reality through signs and symbols. So what most people might consider “reality” Baudrillard called “hyperreality”. And luckily for us he was working in the late 20th century so we don’t have to do too much mental gymnastics to wonder what he might have thought of lifestyle influencer TikTok. Most likely he would not find it that confusing or surprising. According to Baudrillard the purpose of hyperreality is to interact and reproduce with itself with the ultimate goal of creating a simulation with no identifiable original. “Cinema also approaches absolute correspondence with itself” he wrote, “this is not contradictory, it is the very definition of the hyperreal…Cinema plagiarizes itself, recopies itself, remakes the classics, retro-activates its original myths…[it] is fascinated by itself as a lost object as much as it is fascinated by the lost referent.”
So what is the lost referent of the lifestyle simulacrum? What is the thing that lifestyle influencers are putting in so much effort to emulate? Do they know if they’re trying to emulate something specific? This is something I’m still sitting on and happily open up you, the reader. I thought at first the lost referent might be “middle-class America” or the “American Dream” but that seemed too obvious. But don’t they say that the most obvious answer is usually the right one? I also thought maybe they were simulating “lifestyle” altogether but what the fuck even is that, honestly. I’m not sure I’ll come up with a really satisfying answer to this question and honestly I wonder whether one exists. Perhaps we are in the third or even the final stage, in which the referent no longer exists and everything is a simulacrum of itself. How fun!
I do want to end with an acknowledgement of my own online presence. I of course have been known to dabble in “lifestyle content creation” and even find some enjoyment in it. It feels nice to have a creative outlet where I can form connections with people who have similar interests. But I must admit that I didn’t (and kind of still don’t) take my online presence too seriously and I’m now wondering if I should? Should I be more conscientious about the reality I’m presenting? Is the solution to just..stop? In this current era of online branding and niches and LinkedIn and digital footprint, being online has started to feel more like a rat race in a minefield than anything else. Unfortunately, I will literally die if I don’t share my thoughts online so I’m probably not going anywhere. But for now at least I’m here and you’re here and we’re sharing this tiny little reality and that’s kind of cool!