We're all Fools in the Cyberspace

With the global spread of social networks—and now, the rapid rise of generative artificial intelligence—our perception of reality and identity is being pushed to its limits.

A reader recently told me that I’m out of my mind—a bit crazy, even. Considering he chose to become a premium subscriber, I assume he meant it in a good way.

Still, his words stuck with me. Am I crazy? Or perhaps… am I just a Fool?

The Fool, in the language of the Tarot, is the one who leaps into the unknown, walking the edge of the abyss with a mix of naivety, recklessness, and boundless curiosity.

He has no fixed place in the sequence of the Major Arcana—he is both the beginning and the end, the unshaped potential, the raw force of experience unmoored from certainty. And perhaps, in some ways, the digital age has made Fools of us all.

Between Worlds

Since childhood, between one skateboarding adventure and another, I have lived more in the liminal spaces of the mind than in the so-called “real world.”

From the early 2000s, I was already diving headfirst into online forums, multiplayer games, and anonymous communities. In these last 24 years, I have worn hundreds of different identities, often nameless, allowing me to interact with people who, like me, were shifting between masks, between selves.

The internet did not simply provide an escape—it became a place where identity itself could be explored, remixed, and discarded. Yet, something strange began to happen.

Digital interactions, while real in terms of emotional impact and engagement, lack the tangible, sensory grounding that characterizes physical-world relationships. The five senses are nullified, everything is projected directly into the mind, without filters. In this context, human consciousness—and specifically the Ego, the core of identity—navigates a terrain where the boundaries between subjective and objective reality are increasingly blurred.

Who is truly behind the masks? And at what point does the mask begin to shape the wearer?

With the global spread of social networks—and now, the rapid rise of generative artificial intelligence—our perception of reality and identity is being pushed to its limits.

Today, any individual can multiply their digital selves, developing Pirandellian masks that allow them to interact in ways that might have once seemed impossible. As we embrace this fluidity, we are also witnessing something even more disorienting: the emergence of highly evolved AI-driven personas, deepfake avatars, and artificial entities that can seamlessly blend into our conversations.

This is no longer just a question of anonymity or role-playing—it is a shift in the very structure of our reality. If artificial agents can now occupy the same digital stage as human beings, engaging in discussions, creating content, and even forming seemingly coherent personalities, then how do we discern what is real? And more importantly—how does this impact us?

Can we still maintain a firm perception of reality and ourselves in this liminal space between dream and reality? Or are we destined to become increasingly dissociated?

The Principle of Consciousness and cyberspace

Various esoteric and philosophical traditions throughout history have described the process through which consciousness emerges, evolves, and manifests through different planes or levels of existence.