Hyperreality in Cyberspace: Web sites of Three American Beatles Tribute Bands
The Fab Four (http://www.thefabfour.com)
American English (http://www.americanenglishbeatles.com)
1964 The Tribute (http://www.1964thetribute.com).

Eleven years after the Beatles' famous debut on the Ed Sullivan Show, Umberto Eco described a peculiar American trait: "the American imagination demands the real thing and, to attain it, must fabricate the absolute fake," he wrote. A person, an animal, or even a city region becomes "hyperreal" in Eco's sense when its simulation or reproduction becomes more real than the original. As examples, he discusses what he calls "two typical slogans that pervade American advertising. The first, widely used by Coca-Cola but also frequent as a hyperbolic formula in everyday speech, is 'the real thing'; the second, found in print and heard on TV, is 'more'—in the sense of 'extra'… more than you're used to having." Jean Baudrillard describes the development of "hyperreality" as an evolutionary process. For Baudrillard, imitation gives way to a second phase: the creation of a new reality, in which "simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation itself as a simulacrum."