Likely Normal

Blurred Reality: When Your Brain Gets Stuck in the Digital World

Gamers exist in a perpetual state of dimensional drift, where the rules of virtual worlds inevitably corrupt their perception of reality. It begins innocently enough – you absentmindedly reach for an invisible skip button during your spouse’s story about their day, or catch yourself scanning supermarket aisles for glowing loot indicators. But soon you’re fully immersed in the delusion, attempting to quick save before important life decisions like proposing marriage or signing a lease. The real trouble starts when survival instincts get overwritten by game mechanics – you consider eating an entire wheel of cheese to recover from a mild headache, or stare at a locked door waiting for a lockpicking minigame to appear. This isn’t mixed reality or virtual reality, I call it “blurred reality.”

VR takes this disconnect to terrifying new heights. There’s nothing quite like watching a grown adult try to lean on a virtual railing only to crash onto their living room floor, or hearing someone shout “FUS RO DAH!” at a malfunctioning vending machine. Even basic object permanence fails – you lose your phone and instinctively check your inventory menu, or wonder why punching a tree in your backyard isn’t yielding any blocks of wood. The most tragic moment comes when you stub your toe and your first thought isn’t ouch but “where’s my health bar?” and “did I remember to buy potions?”

The real world becomes an inferior sequel full of bugs and poor design choices. Why can’t we fast travel to work? Why is there no quest compass for finding my lost TV remote? And most importantly, why don’t my real-life skills improve through simple repetition like they do in games? They may look like fully functional adults, but inside they’re all just frustrated NPCs trapped in a reality they see as one with terrible graphics, no respawn points, and entirely too many unskippable cutscenes.