Simulacral Technologies and The Threefold Identity Crisis: can deepfakes effectuate a society-wide increase of imposter syndrome and feelings of inadequacy?

Two pathologies strongly implicated with the problematic ontological status of identity are imposter syndrome and feelings of inadequacy. We will critically examine the quickly rising technology of deepfakes in relation to these two pathologies. Deepfakes may have the potential to increase the occurrences of both imposter syndrome and feelings of inadequacy due to the intimate relationship that they attain with an individual’s identity. In order to make our argument, a parallel will be drawn between the technology of deepfakes and the threefold identity crisis of contemporary Western society. This threefold crisis consists in a perpetual questioning of identity, increasing identity constraint, and a growing pressure to commit to an identity through the ubiquity of simulacra. In turn, the technology of deepfakes may maintain all these three aspects due to the mechanism by which it generates its outputs.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Lars van der Miesen

Conference

Publication date: September 2021

Publication date (Print): September 2021

Pages: 261-266

Affiliations

[0001]Black Brick Research Platform

Utrecht, The Netherlands

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/POM2021.34

SO-VID: c86dd81e-190d-4d73-973f-9f8c6fb9abb1

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Proceedings of Politics of the Machines - Rogue Research 2021

Conference acronym: POM 2021

Conference number: 3

Conference location: Berlin, Germany

Conference date: September 14-17, 2021

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: debate and devise concepts and practices that seek to critically question and unravel novel modes of science

History

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1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/POM2021.34

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

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Comments

Comment on this article

[1] T. W Adorno (2008) Lectures on Negative Dialectics. Polity Press, Oxford.

[2] T AdornoW & E.B Ashton (1997). Negative Dialectics. Bloomsbury Academic, US.

[3] D. M Bravata, S. A Watts, A. L Keefer, D. K Madhusudhan, K. T Taylor, D. M Clark, R. S Nelson, K. O Cokley, & H. K Hagg (2019) Prevalence, Predictors, and Treatment of Impostor Syndrome: A Systematic Review. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 35(4), 1252–1275.

[4] M Breeze (2018) Imposter Syndrome as a Public Feeling. Feeling Academic in the Neoliberal University, 191–219.

[5] D’AmbrosioP. J, & MoellerH. G (2019). From Authenticity to Profilicity. New German Critique, 46(2), 576–596.

[6] G Deleuze, M Lester, C. V Boundas, & C Stivale (1990) Logic of Sense. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam.

[7] E Esposito (2013) The structures of uncertainty: performativity and unpredictability in economic operations. Economy and Society, 42(1), 102–129.

[8] Y Ettema (2021) Deep Memories. http://yorie.nl/deep-memories/ ( 8 July 2021 )

[9] D Evans (2006) An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Taylor & Francis, London.

[10] L Floridi (2018). Artificial Intelligence, Deepfakes and a Future of Ectypes. SSRN Electronic Journal. Published.

[11] S Lepp (date unknown) Statement. http://www.deepreckonings.com/statement.html ( 2 July 2021 ).

[12] N Luhmann, & L Niklas (2002) Theories of Distinction. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam.

[13] Perarnau G., van de Weijer J., Raducanu B., and Alvarez J. M. (2016) Invertible conditional gans for image editing. arXiv preprint arXiv:1611.06355.

[14] R Rini (2020) Deepfakes and the Epistemic Backstop. Philosopher’s Imprint, 20(24), 1–16.

[15] D Simmons (2016). Impostor Syndrome, a Reparative History. Engaging Science, Technology, and Society, 2, 106–127.

[16] D Smail (2015) The Origins of Unhappiness. Taylor & Francis, London.

[17] F Wu, Y Ma, & Z Zhang (2021) “I Found a More Attractive Deepfaked Self”: The Self-Enhancement Effect in Deepfake Video Exposure. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 24(3), 173–181.

[18] C Zhang, S Bengio, M Hardt, B Recht, & O Vinyals (2021) Understanding deep learning (still) requires rethinking generalization. Communications of the ACM, 64(3), 107–115.

[19] E Zotov, A Tiwari, V Kadirkamanathan Towards a digital twin with generative adversarial network modelling of machining vibration. In: International Conference on Engineering Applications of Neural Networks, Halkidiki, 5 - 7 June 2020 , 190–201. Springer International, Cham.

[20] S Žižek (date unknown) Ideology I: No Man is an Island. http://www.lacan.com/zizwhiteriot.html (retrieved 26-08-2021)

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