As one who came of age musically in the 80s and 90s this was the first thing that came to mind, the centerfold of an REM album liner notes.
When I first came across that picture all those years ago I marvelled at the possibilities of something like that being possible. Wow, I can now look younger, more fit, more attractive?
Of course, today we live in a time in which we have great suspicion about any photo or image. Whether it's dudes flexing phantom muscles or politically motivated shots of politicians appearing somewhere they aren't or hamburgers that look much, much better than they do in reality, we never know what really to believe anymore...so we choose to stop believing.
Maybe this will be the death of sites like Instagram, with all of its beautifully filtered photos of people and places. People will get tired of the delusion. Or maybe we will just learn to no longer accept anything at face value anymore. Part of the worldview of any future generation will be a general agnosticism about almost anything, even as they enjoy the cropped and airbrushed pictures. Even as lines between virtual reality and real reality begin to fade, will we no longer believe even what we can touch, see for ourselves, or hear?
And what will this do to matters of real importance, like faith in Christ? Will more people hold to a form of Christianity even as they casually dismiss the idea of resurrection or spiritual power to be unreal or impossible? Will future generations no more believe the Scriptures and rather read the many deconstructions about how it came together as simply a human book?
It's a scary world out there when you can't even tell that our president looks like the fat orange guy that he is. But it reminds me, that he's the perfect president for our fake world.
