In the context of artificially creating a condition of reality, the best-known example is that of DeBeers where the tagline, “a diamond is forever” is known to have attached a false sense of value to a simple carbonated rock particle. Besides this, the De Beers advertisements also make strong use of the sign and signification concept (including the referent, the signifier, and the signified), where their advertisements, instead of giving any information on the products (seen in cases associated with narrative structures and informationalization) create meanings through various signs and symbols. Here we will find that love’s status as a basic and simple human emotion is weakened, while the diamond’s position as a fake emotion is overruled through careful manipulation. Here diamonds supersede the actual human emotion of love, not because it manages to gain perfection and achieve the same characteristics of human love (which is not possible in reality), nor through the exhaustion of human love (again not possible under real circumstances), but through a cleverly manipulated simulation that coats the relationship between these two objects. In this context, the paper will examine the concept of simulation and hyper-reality, comprehend how media managed to manipulate and erase the basic line between fantasy and reality and create a false sense of value or consumer emotion. It will also analyze the concept of sign and signification, to find out the meaning behind the signs and symbols used in the advertisements.

In post-modernism (especially in the context of capitalistic economies and post-modern developed nations), hyperrealism is a concept that reveals a condition where human consciousness fails to differentiate between a falsely created ‘real’ world (simulation) and actual reality (Baudrillard, 1994). In other words, hyper-reality typifies what consciousness distinguishes as “reality” in the cultural context where mass media has the power to alter incidents before presenting them to the readers/viewers.