Definition of "simulacrum"

Like the full-scale map in Borges’s short story “On Exactitude in Science,” the representation takes on the dimensions of reality to the point of replacing it. The French theorist Jean Baudrillard uses Borges’s story as a metaphor for his notion of the simulacrum, which probably explains why Caden, who has trouble naming things, considers titling his production “Simulacrum.”

2008 October 23, Manohla Dargis, “Dreamer, Live in the Here and Now”, in New York Times‎

The future just wants more consumers. The future is more newly arrived college grads and tourists in some fruitless search for authenticity. The future is more overpriced Pabsts at dive-bar simulacrums.

2018, Ling Ma, chapter 1, in Severance

We shouldn’t have to dodge traffic on an eight-lane road just to get to a simulacrum of an inclusive urban place. The problem is not too much Disneyland thinking—it’s not enough.

2018 September 18, Amanda Kolson Hurley, “Fake Public Squares Are Coming to the Suburbs”, in The Atlantic‎