Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World

A poorly managed brand is distinctly less consequential than a poorly managed soul—but, on the other hand, the consequences occur in this realm, not the next.

The point is that on either side of the reflective glass, we are not having disagreements about differing interpretations of reality—we are having disagreements about who is in reality and who is in a simulation.

Conspiracy influencers perform what I have come to think of as a doppelganger of investigative journalism, imitating many of its stylistic conventions while hopping over its accuracy guardrails.

At the heart of Exterminate All the Brutes is the claim that Hitler—the twentieth century’s most despised villain, and rightly so—was not the civilized, democratic West’s evil “other,” but its shadow, its doppelganger. This draws on Lindqvist’s argument that the exterminatory mindset lies at “the core of European thought … summing up the history of

In her landmark 1984 book, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, hooks cautioned readers to “avoid using the phrase ‘I am a feminist’” and opt instead for “I advocate feminism,” explaining that unlike the “I am” label, which triggers the listener’s prior beliefs about what and who is a feminist, the latter is far more likely to begin a conversati

To be the only clean one in a dirty business. And isn’t that what so many of us want as we try to win the game of personal branding—or at least not to get slain by it? We carefully cultivate online personas—doubles of our “real” selves—that have just the right balance of sincerity and world-weariness.

Evidently, a great many of us want nothing more than to find another person who knows precisely what it is like to live inside our bodies and minds—and that desire coexists with the drive to be unmistakably different.

when we are surrounded by need, we are called upon to become better caretakers.

Am I who I think I am, or am I who others perceive me to be? And if enough others start seeing someone else as me, who am I, then?