HyperNormalisation (2016)

Dir. Adam Curtis

“In a time of individualism, what made people feel secure was having themselves reflected to them, just like a mirror.”

Add this to the list of things that everyone needs to watch. The argument that’s made in part by this filmmaker is that social media has centered the world around oneself, which was beneficial for people who were anxious about the future, reassuring them in a “bubble that protected you from the complexities of the world outside.” However, it’s not presented in the expected way of “people nowadays are so self-centered.” It’s so easy for people of any age to use that cliche, citing selfies and whatever else, but what this documentary proves is that there’s much more to it all — it’s a global development that’s deeply intersected with politics.

There’s a genuine concern that comes through in this documentary; it’s like a clock ticking towards some sort of doomsday. The filmmaker’s points are often connected to the idea of internet algorithms that make sure what you like is regurgitated back to you, which is accurately compared to the “hypernormalization” of Soviet Russia. When looking at the state of digital media today — eight years after this was released — it’s only worsened, with popular video formats preventing users from having even the slightest moment to evaluate what they’ve just watched.

I’ll include this full quote below because it’s so telling of how society has given into sheltering themselves. This is referring to the USSR but could just as similarly be applied to the U.S.:

“[The Soviet Union] had discovered that it was impossible to control and predict everything, and the plan had run out of control. Rather than reveal this, the technocrats began to pretend that everything was still going according to plan, and what emerged instead was a fake version of their society. The Soviet Union became a society where everyone knew that what their leaders said was not real because they could see with their own eyes that the economy was falling apart. But everybody had to play along and pretend that it was real, because no one could imagine any alternative. One Soviet writer called it ‘hypernormalization.’ You were so much a part of the system that it was impossible to see beyond it. The fakeness was hypernormal.”

Really frightening stuff.

1/19/25