Under the mantra "publish, appear or perish", the authors intend to show the reality of academic production in these times of "society of the spectacle", through the critique of the real mode of knowledge production and the consequences of its transformation into a category of analysis. Within these consequences, the authors highlight academic productivism, control over research, plagiarism, the need to distinguish the number of publications in the analysis of prestigious channels and the emergence of a new kind of knowledge whose process and results they are induced from external environments to the university.