The Public Arena

Where vast numbers of existentially unreal people vainly endeavour through sheer weight of numbers to create one real collective entity.
Thus the excitement in certain circles about the Booker Prize: where a few other people read alot of contemporary novels and decide which one they like best, or think they like best, or think they should like best, and "the public" get to co-inhabit this public sphere, thus deepening the sense of their individual reality within this common public reality, which pseudo-consciousness is likewise strengthened by its accumulation of human numbers. Though one had better not investigate too seriously what the foundation stones of this commonality are.
The same goes obviously for all other manner of awards ceremonies; self-transcendence within the manufactured collective consciousness.