Reality may be fake, bloggers warn

BLOGOSPHERE — In what major bloggers see as a defining moment for bottom-up journalism, major bloggers warned yesterday that the universe itself may be a clever forgery.

The controversy began in a late-night entry on PhiloBlog.com, where a poster identified only as "Duckhead" challenged the notion that any kind of objective reality exists at all.

"What is reality anyway?" the entry read in part. "Reality is what is filtered through our senses. Maybe what you see as red, I see as blue. Maybe what tastes like Mountain Dew to me tastes like Pespi to you."

Within minutes over two dozen major bloggers had picked up on the post, including Jason Kottke of Kottke.org and Rob Malda (aka CmdrTaco) of Slashdot.

"This makes a lot of sense to me," wrote Kottke. "The nonexistence of absolute truth may very well explain us to ourselves."

Citing the works of deconstructionist philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and Barbara Johnson, Kottke revealed further flaws in the assumption of an empirically verifiable reality.

"Everything we experience is, ultimately, a construction of our minds," he wrote, "and thus the universe and everything in it is also a construction."

But Malda took a more practical approach in his post, listing phenomena only comprehensible if Duckhead's theory is true.

"I understand everything now," wrote Malda. "I've always been baffled by the existence of such things as genocide, child abuse, Freddie Prinz Jr. and Glitter: The Mariah Carey Story, but if it's right that these things are just figments of our — possibly demented — imaginations, everything becomes clear."

Less than an hour after major bloggers latched onto the story it appeared on Matt Drudge's The Drudge Report, and from there it was soon picked up by mainstream media outlets, including CBS, ABC, NBC and CNN.

Empiricists were scrambling this morning to counter the claims made by Duckhead.

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