Gaslitcatfish: They’re Called Dreams Because You Must Be Asleep to Have Them
(working outline, ~15 chapters, 70–80k words)
Part I – The World of Illusion
1. The Age of the Gaslitcatfish
- Why gaslighting (denying reality to sow doubt) + catfishing (constructing false personas to lure belief) define our cultural moment.
- Illusion is not new – but it’s harder to ignore now.
2. Smoke, Mirrors, and Memes
- A brief history of deception: religion, feudal hierarchies, colonial myth-making.
- Today’s memes and digital culture are recycled magic tricks.
3. The Veto on Reality
- Who decides what counts as real?
- From priests and monarchs to corporations and algorithms.
Part II – The Gaslight
4. The Psychology of Doubt
- Gaslighting as a tool of control.
- From intimate relationships to national politics.
5. Consensus by Confusion
- The strategy of flooding the world with half-truths.
- How and why too much information can make truth invisible.
6. The Manufacture of Silence (interlude)
- The unsaid and the unsayable.
- Censorship, taboo, and quiet complicity.
Part III – The Catfish
7. Profiles and Projections
- Every profile is a mask.
- “Authenticity” as performance.
8. The Economy of Illusion
- Brands, influencers, and corporations selling images instead of realities.
- The commodification of trust and identity.
9. Deepfakes and Shallow Truths
- Synthetic personas, AI fictions, bots, scams.
- The crisis of not knowing what’s real.
Part IV – Gaslitcatfish Together
10. The Gullibility Economy
- Attention is the raw material of the unreal.
- Scams, conspiracies, and the monetization of belief.
11. Communities of Pretend
- Online tribes built on shared illusions.
- Parasocial bonds, fandom, and the intimacy of unreality.
12. The Algorithm Knows Best (interlude)
- Algorithms as unseen tricksters.
- The shift from divine fate → algorithmic fate.
Part V – What Now?
13. Escaping the Hall of Mirrors
- Critical thinking, media literacy, skepticism, satire.
- How to see clearly without drowning in cynicism.
14. Radical Transparency or Radical Play?
- Two responses to deception: expose it or own it.
- The risks and advantages of each.
15. The Dream of the Real
- Our hunger for truth in a world of illusions.
- What myths we might need to live by while awake.
Chapter 1: The Curtain Rises: Why Fakery Matters Now
Riff: The feed scrolls endlessly: deepfakes, influencers crying on cue, politicians saying the opposite of last week. You can’t even tell if your neighbor’s smile is genuine or algorithmic. The whole world feels like a stage, and we’re all stuck in the audience, squinting, asking: Is any of this real?
Pivot:
Set stakes: the crisis of perception in the digital age.
Introduce “gaslitcatfish” as a phrase: half psychological abuse, half online deception.
Acknowledge: fakery isn’t new – but the scale, speed, and saturation are unprecedented.
Thesis: This book is a survival manual for the age of illusion. To understand today’s fakery, we must trace it back through its long history, where imagination became simulation, and simulation became manipulation.
Chapter 2: Smoke, Mirrors, and Memes
From Cave Paintings to TikTok
Riff: The first gaslitcatfish wasn’t a king or a priest, or even a liar. It was a hunter crouched by firelight, sketching a bison on stone and saying: This is what tomorrow looks like. Or maybe it was the tribe sitting around after chewing mushrooms, their minds sparking with images that didn’t exist yet but might someday. Illusion didn’t begin as deception – it began as imagination, an evolutionary mental rehearsal essential for survival.
Pivot:
This chapter traces the prehistoric roots of simulation and storytelling:
The “stoned ape” hypothesis – altered states may have triggered new ways of thinking, but the real leap was the brain learning to reorganize itself, to simulate outcomes before they happened.
Cave art as proto-simulation – depictions of animals weren’t decoration; they were practice, magic, the first “what ifs.”
Shamanism and ritual – here imagination tipped into power, where performance blurred with truth and authority was built on the invisible.
Oral myth-making – stories carried memory and cohesion, but also became levers for influence and control.
Thesis: Imagination was our first survival technology – a way to model the world, prepare for it, and share collective visions. Fakery came later, when these same tools were turned from survival into manipulation. What began as survival art would eventually become propaganda, branding, and illusion.
Chapter 3: Gods, Kings, and Magic Tricks
Riff: A priest declares an eclipse is punishment from the gods. He knew it was coming, but the crowd believes the performance. Knowledge wrapped in theater becomes power.
Pivot:
Rise of symbolic authority (priests, kings, rituals).
Theater, masks, and pageantry as early political technology.
Fakery as structured hierarchy: “I know what you don’t, therefore obey.”
Thesis: Authority has always worn a costume. Fakery consolidates when imagination turns from communal survival into centralized control.
Chapter 4: The Medieval Meme Machine
Riff: A stained-glass window glows in the cathedral. The peasants can’t read the Bible, but the image says enough: sin, redemption, obedience. The first mass media, delivered in light.
Pivot:
Illusion in architecture, spectacle in ceremony.
Myths and relics as tools of mass persuasion.
Fakery as divine branding: heaven sold through imagery.
Thesis: Where literacy is rare, fakery flourishes through spectacle. Stories carved
in stone become as binding as law.
Chapter 5: The Printing Press Panic
Riff: Pamphlets scatter like wildfire. Some preach truth, others spread lies. Suddenly, imagination isn’t just top-down – it’s bottom-up chaos.
Pivot:
Gutenberg’s press → democratization of ideas.
First “fake news” panics (witch hunts, propaganda wars).
Fakery shifts from monopoly to competition.
Thesis: Every new medium disrupts the balance: imagination expands, fakery follows close behind. Print unleashed both literacy and disinformation.
Chapter 6: Enlightenment, Revolutions, and the Dream of Reason
Riff: Liberty caps on heads, tricolor flags waving, philosophers scribbling manifestos – truth and fakery march side by side in revolution.
Pivot:
Reason vs superstition.
Enlightenment ideals as both emancipation and illusion.
Early nationalism: imagined communities, flags, slogans.
Thesis: Even as societies pursued truth, fakery adapted – cloaking itself in reason, rights, and ideals.
Chapter 7: Industrial Fakery: Smoke, Ads, and the Rise of the Image
Riff: Posters plastered on city walls. Soap promises purity, machines promise progress. Factories spew smoke behind the billboards.
Pivot:
Industrialization = spectacle + spin.
Birth of advertising: imagination as profit.
Fakery industrialized alongside goods.
Thesis: Capitalism professionalized fakery. Selling dreams became as important as producing goods.
Chapter 8: War by Illusion: Propaganda in the 20th Century
Riff: Posters scream: “Your Country Needs You!” Radio blares slogans. Films show enemies as monsters. Fakery becomes a weapon.
Pivot:
WWI & WWII propaganda.
Totalitarian spectacle (rallies, symbols, myths).
Fakery as a survival strategy for states.
Thesis: War weaponized imagination into mass hallucination. Fakery was no longer just survival – it was domination.
Chapter 9: The Television Dream Factory
Riff: Families gather around flickering screens. Cowboys ride, presidents smile, sitcom families laugh on cue. Reality filtered through a box.
Pivot:
TV as mass storyteller.
Advertising culture explodes.
Fakery normalized in domestic space.
Thesis: Television created the modern baseline of reality distortion: everyday life lived through screens.
Chapter 10: Silicon Promises: The Early Internet
Riff: The 90s web glows utopian: forums, chatrooms, promises of digital democracy. A new frontier with old illusions.
Pivot:
Early optimism of cyberspace.
Fakery disguised as freedom.
Dot-com bubbles and cyber-myths.
Thesis: The internet expanded imagination exponentially, but left the door open for fakery to metastasize.
Chapter 11: Catfish, Trolls, and Avatars
Riff: A message pops up: “She loves you.” But behind the profile picture is someone else entirely. Fakery becomes personal.
Pivot:
Online identity play.
Catfishing as digital theater.
Trolls, avatars, anonymity.
Thesis: In the digital self, fakery isn’t a side effect – it is the experience.
Chapter 12: The Algorithmic Illusion
Riff: You scroll. The feed scrolls you back. Reality itself bends toward engagement, outrage, and profit.
Pivot:
Social media platforms as attention engines.
Algorithms curating illusions.
Truth drowned in optimized fakery.
Thesis: The system doesn’t care if it’s real or fake – only if you keep looking. Fakery is no longer a glitch, but the business model.
Chapter 13: Deepfakes and Synthetic Realities
Riff: A politician speaks words they never said. A celebrity appears in a film they never made. Fakery detaches from human effort.
Pivot:
AI-generated images, voices, texts.
Fakery industrialized at infinite scale.
The collapse of “seeing is believing.”
Thesis: We’ve reached a new stage: fakery as automated, frictionless, and total.
Chapter 14: The Metaverse Mirage
Riff: Put on the headset. Now you’re in a world where anything is possible – except truth.
Pivot:
VR/AR as immersive fakery.
The blending of game, work, and social life.
Illusion monetized as lifestyle.
Thesis: The metaverse is the logical endgame: a world where imagination is indistinguishable from fakery, and fakery indistinguishable from life.
Chapter 15: Survival in the Age of Fakery
Riff: You can’t unplug. Fakery is baked into the fabric of reality. But you can learn to see the seams.
Pivot:
Techniques: skepticism, literacy, pattern-spotting.
Embrace imagination, resist manipulation.
Call for “imagination without fakery.”
Thesis: The goal isn’t to kill illusion, but to reclaim it. We must separate imagination as a survival tool from fakery as a weapon. Only then can we live awake.