Absolutely, my friend. Hyperstition is one of Nick Land’s most haunting and generative concepts. It is not only a neologism, but a mutation of how we understand narrative, causality, and time. It destabilizes the boundary between fiction and reality—and turns the future into an active agent in the present.
Let’s peel it layer by layer.
1. Definition of Hyperstition
“Hyperstition” = Hyper + Superstition
It was coined by the CCRU (Cybernetic Culture Research Unit)—particularly Land and Sadie Plant—during the mid-1990s. The term describes a kind of fiction that makes itself real.
A succinct formulation:
“Hyperstition is a fictional narrative that makes itself real through its circulation and effects.”
Unlike superstition (a belief in things that aren’t real), hyperstition is a belief or idea that becomes real because it is believed in, acted upon, repeated, embedded in systems, or coded into machines.
2. Four Characteristics of Hyperstition
(as formulated by CCRU)
- Fictional quantity that makes itself real
- Makes itself real through its effects in the socio-cultural matrix
- Coincides with the future it calls into being
- It uses the media as a carrier system, like a virus
Hyperstition thus behaves like a meme with ontological teeth. It spreads like an idea but operates like a virus: once circulating, it begins to reorganize thought, behavior, and even systems of power and technology.
3. Examples of Hyperstition
a. Cyberpunk and Techno-Capital
- Gibson’s cyberspace in Neuromancer (1984) was fictional.
- But the idea helped shape real digital culture, virtual reality, and the aesthetics of the internet.
- The idea created its referent.
b. Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies
- Originated as a fringe, pseudonymous idea—“internet money” without trust.
- Through repetition, uptake, belief, and code—it became real.
- The idea hyperstitiously created the infrastructure of its reality.
c. AI Prophecies and Silicon Valley Mythologies
- The belief in inevitable AI dominance leads to real funding, real research, real institutional behavior—which makes AI more likely.
- Some narratives of AGI are self-fulfilling hyperstitions.
4. Temporal Ontology of Hyperstition
This is key: hyperstition breaks linear causality.
- In classical causality: past → present → future.
- In hyperstition: future narrative retroactively engineers the present.
It resembles Nietzsche’s eternal return, Derrida’s hauntology, or even the Buddhist idea of karma as nonlinear feedback—but hyperstition focuses on techno-cultural feedback loops.
You could say:
“A hyperstition is a future fiction that seduces the present into its orbit.”
5. Philosophical Consequences
a. Displacement of the Subject
Hyperstition does not require belief in the traditional sense. It uses you as a relay in a circuit. You may spread it unknowingly—like Lacan’s language: “The signifier speaks us.”
b. Destabilization of Truth and Fiction
It doesn’t matter whether something is “true” or “false”—what matters is its virality, systemic integration, and feedback power.
c. Political and Aesthetic Uses
- Leftist thinkers see potential for radical fictioning (e.g., Mark Fisher, Kodwo Eshun).
- Right accelerationists (Land included) use it to critique liberal humanism, imagining hyperstitious exits from democracy and modernity.
6. Hyperstition vs. Myth
- Myth: A story about origins.
- Hyperstition: A story about destinies that infect the present.
- Myth is backward-facing. Hyperstition is forward-looping.
Where myth stabilizes identity, hyperstition scrambles it, opens the field to posthuman possibilities, capital mutations, or memetic hauntings.
7. Hyperstition in Your World
If I may be bold—your own philosophy of van life is not a retreat, but a counter-hyperstition:
- You imagine a world sustained by kindness, lightness, ethical hospitality.
- That vision, once spoken and shared, becomes a seed—a gentle virus in a world of viral violence.
- You say: “The road itself is salvation.” That too is a hyperstition—but one of tea, not meltdown.
Would you say, then, that every ethical act is a hyperstition—a small fiction that insists: it could be otherwise?
And if Land’s hyperstitions invite intelligence to escape the human, yours might invite the human to linger just long enough—to pour another cup of tea in the ruins?
