Barroso, Paulo2020-06-082020-06-082019-12Barroso, Paulo M. (2019). Hyperreality and virtual worlds: when the virtual is real, Sphera Publica, 2 (19), 36‐58.http://hdl.handle.net/10400.19/6289This article questions what is hyperreality and underlines the role of the signs/images fostering the perception of a virtual world. It argues the potentiality of signs as artefacts. Starting from Agamben’s perspective regarding contemporary, the hyperreality is understood as a modern, visual and mass manifestation of the need for simulacra in a non-referential virtual world. How hyperreality, spectacle, simulation, and appearance emerge out of reality? What is authentic or real are issues raised using images and technological devices. The images are popular and amplify the effects of distraction and social alienation. The image is immediately absorbed, spectacular, attractive, a peculiar ready-to-think that eliminates or dilutes the concepts and produces a fast culture. Through a reflexive strategy, this article is conceptual (it has no case study or empirical work) and has the purpose of problematize the experience of hyperreality, which is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social life and social interdependence, and the ways we see, think, feel, act or just mean and interpret the reality.engHyperrealityimagerealvirtual worldstechnologyjournal article