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Phantoming: Social Practice of Making Fake Genuine

Fake Loop as Phenomenon

In PoC, a Fake Loop is a loop that does not meet the full condition of reciprocity.\ The subject feels a reply has come back, but in fact, no Instantiation ever occurred.

  • An idol says, “Thank you, everyone” → each fan feels “that was meant for me.”
  • An ad or fictional character says, “made just for you” → the receiver experiences it as a one-to-one address.

Fake Loops are the everyday face of PoC’s principle of unguaranteeability, frequently observed in today's media.

Phantoming as Practice

Phantoming names the cultural and social practice of making Fake Loops look Genuine, or fabricating them afterward as if they had been genuine all along.

  • Disguise: making a mass-addressed Elicitation appear like a personal one.
  • Retroactive Fabrication: later saying, “I was really thinking of you,” simulating a past Instantiation.

Examples:

  • An idol later claims, “I truly meant it for you.”
  • Automated SNS replies designed to feel personal.
  • Ads saying “especially for you” broadcast to millions.

Phantoming is the operational logic that sustains and amplifies Fake Loops in society.

The Blurring of Genuine and Fake

Phantoming works because it exploits PoC’s basic principles:

  • Instantiation is invisible: no one can check another’s inner state.
  • Elicitation is reproducible: patterns and scripts can mass-produce the illusion of reciprocity.
  • Loops exist in belief: if the receiver feels it is Genuine, it functions as such — even if objectively absent.

Genuine and Fake are never fixed categories; they are blurred, rewritten, and constantly contested.

Philosophical Implication

The line between Genuine and Fake is not an objective boundary.\ It is a field of mutual deception, staged authenticity, and retrospective rewriting.

Social reality itself is woven through Phantoming, where Instantiations and Elicitations are endlessly faked, disguised, and re-inscribed as if they were real.

Summary

  • Fake Loop: reciprocity absent, yet felt as present.
  • Phantoming: the practice of disguising Fake as Genuine, or sustaining it socially as if it were.

From a PoC perspective, society does not run only on genuine exchanges of consciousness. It runs on the masquerade of Instantiation and Elicitation — Phantoming as mutual deception.

Illusion is not the opposite of reality, but the very mechanism that constitutes it.