Reality shifting: psychological features of an emergent online daydreaming culture

• Reality shifting (RS) is a trendy mental activity that emerged abruptly following the flare-up of the COVID-19 pandemicin 2020 and seems to be practiced mainly by members of the post-millennial generation. RS, described as the experience ofbeing able to transcend one’s physical confines and visit alternate, mostly fictional, universes, is discussed by many on Internetplatforms. One RS forum boasts over 40,000 members and RS clips on some social media platforms have been viewedover 1.7 billion times. The experience of shifting is reportedly facilitated by specific induction methods involving relaxation,concentration of attention, and autosuggestion. Some practitioners report a strong sense of presence in their desired realities,reified by some who believe in the concrete reality of the alternate world they shift to. One of the most popular alternateuniverses involves environments adopted from the Harry Potter book and film series. We describe the phenomenology ofRS as reported online and then compare it to related phenomena such as hypnosis, tulpamancy, dissociation, immersive andmaladaptive daydreaming, and lucid dreaming. We propose a theoretical model of interactive factors giving rise to RS, andconclude that it is an important, uninvestigated emerging phenomenon and propose future research directions.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Psykologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Psychology (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

reality shifting

hypnosis

dissociation

tulpamancy

maladaptive daydreaming

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