Recently, while traveling the interior of Texas, my friend Mike texted a photo of these T-shirts to me. To me this was a postcard from hyperreality: a different place with different rules of meaning that, seductively, was masquerading as reality.

Socialism Distancing? Socialism Distancing? What is that? It looks like word salad generated by a CAPTCHA gone crazy. “Socialism,” noun; “Distancing,” noun. The more I thought about it, the more perplexed I became. The noun of “distancing” should certainly be modified by an adjective.

So, the shirt designer’s intention, rendered grammatical, was to say “social(ist) distancing.” Holding that to be true, that doesn’t seem to communicate much either. What is signified by “socialist distancing” instead of:

• “capitalist distancing”
• “supply-side distancing”
• “voodoo distancing”
• “Keynsian distancing”
• “Maoist distancing”

I humbly submit that no one, including the designer or the proprietor of the establishment could tell me what the sign “socialist distancing” means vis-à-vis Merriam Webster’s definition:

socialism: noun: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods

“Socialism.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/socialism. Accessed 8 Apr. 2021.

This word, “socialism,” as used on this T-Shirt was a message in a bottle from hyperreality that had drifted into our world. To understand what’s afoot here, I leaned on my recollection of postmodern philosophy, French Style. And for this we will turn to that enfant terrible, Jean Baudrillard and his challenging work Simulacra and Simulation.