The actual process of mediation takes place, de Zengotita explains, when what is real is represented through any form of media (think of anything from a home video to a multimillion-dollar biopic). As representations grow in variety, sophistication, and intensity, they create what he calls a “psychic sauna” of experiences, sensations, and options that we glide over the surface of, like “a little god, dipping in here and there. . . .” In a mediated world, the flattered self is the center of the universe—the consumer, the viewer, the holder of the remote control—able to opt in or out whether it be in regard to a television set or reality itself. And indeed, technological advancements make it harder and harder to even tell the difference between the two. (Take a movie like Troy, where it's impossible to distinguish the real sets, which are themselves representations of the real city of Troy, from the computer-generated ones.) And as the flood of representation becomes faster, more sensational and ubiquitous, we rarely even make the time or effort to distinguish between what is real and what is synthetic, simulated, or replicated. Nowadays, as de Zengotita puts it, it's as if “the feel of the virtual is overflowing the screens, as if the plasma were spreading into the physical world.” Mediation, he argues, is leading to a fusion of the real and the representational.

Mediated's most significant contribution may be its insights into the existential price we pay as mediated people. De Zengotita writes that the “moreness of everything,” the sheer increase in the volume of media vying for one's attention, leads to adaptations in the psychic life of the human being. Because individuals can only register a certain amount of information in any given moment, the bombardment of media images gives rise to defense mechanisms such as apathy and indifference. Constant exposure to representations creates a “thinness to things, a smoothness, a muffled quality—it's all insulational, as if the deities of Dreamworks were laboring invisibly around us, touching up the canvas of reality with digital airbrushes. . . . Ever notice how,” de Zengotita asks, “when your hand is numb, everything feels thin? Even a solid block of wood lacks volume and texture. You don't feel the wood; your limb just encounters the interrupting object. Numb is to the soul as thin is to the field of representational surfaces.”

Another consequence of growing up in a world of mediation, of always feeding on the “irresistible flattery that goes with being incessantly addressed” by representations, is that one becomes spoiled. The flattered self, de Zengotita writes, “never gets enough. It feels unappreciated. It whines a lot. It wants attention.” In some of the most humorous yet tragic passages in the book, de Zengotita invokes the ethos of the flattered self to weigh in on the discussion. For instance, in a chapter entitled “Twilight of the Heroes in a Teenage World,” he writes, “Take the Big Thinkers. Plato? Augustine? Descartes? Kant? It suddenly hits you. The sheer brass of those guys, pontificating about the ultimate nature of reality and the proper purpose of our lives. I mean, who did they think they were? Don't get me wrong, it's fine to put them in books and teach courses about them and stuff, so long as it doesn't get out of hand, so long as they don't impose on the rest of us who are busy exploring our own options, choosing our own philosophies, our own lifestyles.”

De Zengotita files all the various phenomena and effects of mediation under what he calls “the Blob,” also the name of Steve McQueen's 1958 debut flick (obviously, de Zengotita is not beyond a little mediation himself). The Blob serves as his metaphor for postmodernism, a word that is infamously hard to define. “Anything more specific couldn't possibly do justice to the process of mediation,” he writes. “It proceeds so variously. It works on a case-by-case basis. It comes from all directions and no direction. Nothing is too great for its textured ministrations. Its elasticity is without limit, its osmotic processes calibrated to enfold the tiniest, most private gestures of your secret life and contain your sense of the universe and the meaning of love and death as well.”

There are times, de Zengotita admits, when something will threaten the Blob's supremacy—something that seems real enough, or “sharp enough, as if it might pierce the membrane and slice the pulp.” (Recent examples are 9/11 and the abuses at Abu Ghraib.) “But no,” he writes. “Watch as the media antibodies swarm to the scene of those nascent interruptions. These are the junctures that require the most coverage—and the latent meaning, the ironic dialectic implicit in that word, emerges. What must be covered is any event or person or deed that might challenge the Blob with something like a limit, something the Blob cannot absorb. . . .” To these challenges the Blob will “devote some extra time . . . but in the end it prevails. And how is the moment of its victory marked? By your indifference. That's the signal to move on, the signal for the Next Thing to appear. That's when the original of the real thing has been fully mediated. It becomes representational, and that means optional.”

If you're beginning to find this a tad depressing—it is. As you near the end of the book, having recognized that you are a perpetual motion machine of self-reflexivity and inauthenticity, that in fact we're all method actors coddled by a pervasive Blob of virtual reality, it is hard not to start feeling a little down. The soul-eroding powers of mediation begin to seem inescapable, and in the last chapters, just as you begin to pray for a way out, de Zengotita offers none. Instead, he makes the case that “bogus predictions and lame solutions” have become a genre requirement of social critiques everywhere. Every newspaper column, op-ed piece, book, or article includes a “technological fix.” But these fixes, he argues, aren't so much real solutions as they are aesthetic conventions allowing the reader to feel good and move on to the “Next Thing,” continuing the cycle of consumption. The truth, de Zengotita declares, is that our world is like a fishtailing car on a snowy road: “Things have been getting bigger and faster and more complicated so quickly, for so short a time—and most of what is now happening is happening for reasons no one can fathom. That's about all you can say. So far, we've survived.” He explains that he “hates to be a drag,” but maybe “prediction/solution conclusions persist because they are like that rising tide of music at the end of the movie, the surge of strings that elevates the camera as the expanding horizon shot opens up around the protagonists and gives you that tied-up-in-a-bow feeling to take home with you.”

Despite the truth of this argument, it's hard not to want a solution to mediation. We are living in a world on the brink of disaster on every level—environmental, political, humanitarian. Perhaps the worst effect of mediation, indeed the luxury of mediation for those of us who have the ability to author our own beings, is that it has become the insulation protecting us from the extremity of our privilege and narcissism in relationship to the rest of the world. Residing as we do in a “psychic sauna” of representations, we remain buffered from the reality of a planet in crisis.

With so much at stake, does de Zengotita really mean to say that it's impossible to transcend mediation? If the Blob's elasticity is without limit, does real authenticity no longer exist? Does he believe that we are inescapably condemned by the historical forces of postmodernism? As I pondered these questions, I felt a personal stake in the answers. Having been born into a mediated world, I'd like to think that I'm not forever doomed to feel “nostalgia for the real,” but that authenticity is attainable, that the further reaches of my soul don't always have to be, as de Zengotita writes, “on permanent remote.” Unable to find the answers in the pages of Mediated, however, I decided to consult the author himself.

“Hello, Mr. de Zengotita.”

“Hi, kiddo.”

“I want to start by saying that I found your book incredibly enlightening. You've perfectly articulated my experience of living in the postmodern world, in a culture of optionality and mediation. And I think that many people my age and older are going to feel the same way.”

“I hope so.” (Laughs)

“But I also don't know where it leaves someone like me. I got the sense from the book that once you're a mediated person, it's impossible not to be one; that it's inescapable. Do you think it would actually be impossible for me to transcend mediation?”

“Well, I know a few young people who are serious about this, struggling with this same question, and my gut tells me they've got a shot. And you're certainly one of them. I always have to say that one of the things about an authentic life, as far as I see it, is that the first step is understanding the condition. And mediated is a serious diagnosis. The real answer to your question is that this is a task for you. I will give you every hint and insight I can give, but you're the young people. I'm an old guy. This is up to you.”

“But it's devastating because the book exposes the truth so clearly, yet there's no path to the solution. I mean, once you understand the condition, how can you go beyond it?”

“You just have to not be afraid in this state. Everything significant that has ever come to me intellectually or spiritually has come from this devastated state. That's all you need; it's an openness. You can't be in an ordinary frame of mind because then, when answers come along, you won't even recognize them.”

“That's really interesting. It just struck me that this state of desperation that comes from recognizing the truth is itself a place of authenticity.”

“For sure, kid—I mean, that's what existentialism is all about! I made a conscious decision about the dark, hopeless quality in this book. Most people don't want to read something if they can't feel some bogus feeling of resolution at the end, and I decided that whatever else I was going to do, I wasn't going to do that. I chose a certain role, or voice, because I don't want to let you out of any trap. But that's the artistic design of the book, as opposed to my lifelong goal.”

“Which is what?”

“Anything I can contribute to getting us through this time we're in. Because we can't go back; we have to go through the state we're in to get to new forms of authenticity. That's why I put the burden on your shoulders, Maura. It's always the old guys who get to say gnomic things, but the young people have to do something. And I don't mind leaving you devastated; because I think that if you're the real deal, that's the way you need to be. That's when the next step will come to you.”