Baudrillard famously commented on the successive phases of the image: “It is a reflection of a profound reality… it then masks and de-natures a profound reality… it then masks the absence of a profound reality… it then has no relation to any reality whatsoever.”
Allow me to colloquialize this:
“Oh look, honey, they’re putting in an Ann Taylor Loft where the old Foot Locker used to be! Oh, do you think that it will be open in time for the spring collection? If I don’t have the freshest shit for Susan McLone’s March equinox neo-pagan bullshit gala, I will never be able to show my face around her FarmVille co-op again! Shopping-Bieber-Gray’s Anatomy!”
That was not nearly as polemical as I intended it to be, but you get the point.
