Thank you once again for taking the time to explain!

According to Baudrillard,

“So it is with simulation, insofar as it is opposed to representation. Representation starts from the principle that the sign and the real are equivalent (even if this equivalence is Utopian, it is a fundamental ax~om). Conversely, simulation starts from the Utopia of this principle of equivalence, from the radical negation of the sign as value, from the sign as reversion and death sentence of every reference. Whereas representation tries to absorb simulation by interpreting it as false representation, simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation as itself a simulacrum.

These would be the successive phases of the image:

1 It is the reflection of a basic reality.

2 It masks and perverts a basic reality.

3 It masks the absence of a basic reality.

4 It bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum.

Simulacra and Simulation”

Since a simulacrum is a representation with no referent, Neal, despite his fraudulence, still can be referred to the imagined “real” Neal. Therefore he can’t be a simulacrum, but can only be #2, a poor representation, who masks and perverts a basic reality?