"Transporting Your Consciousness to an 'Alternate Reality' Online Could Cause Memory Problems"

Neuroscience, Psychology, and Health
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I’m curious to hear what memorizers think about this new “Reality Shifting” trend.

…the Raven Method…the Intent Method… These are just a few of the methods flooding many Generation Z discussion corners of TikTok, Reddit, and YouTube. The common denominator? A generation, born between 1997 and 2012, who are escaping their Current Reality—a term used in the Reality Shifting subculture—and migrating into worlds of their own making. Reality shifting—the act of mentally or spiritually transporting your consciousness into an alternate reality—thrives on visualization, affirmations, AI, deep fakes, and virtual worlds. Fueled by fandom, TikTok, and digital escapism, it’s where media-driven illusion feels more real than reality itself. The problem is, immersion in this virtual world could rewire memory, in which case the brain could start treating vivid and repeated memories as real—even though they’re false. This may be problematic, as it leads to distorted self-perception, poor reality handling, and dissociation or detachment from reality, according to scientists studying the phenomenon.

In 1995, psychologist Elizabeth Loftus proved just how easily memories can be rewritten. In her now-famous Lost in the Mall experiment, she implanted entirely false childhood memories in participants—including a fabricated account of getting lost in a shopping mall as a child. About 25 percent of participants developed vivid false memories, complete with emotional responses, sensory details, and fabricated trauma.

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“New.”

Perhaps one of the most misplaced words when it comes to stuff like this.

Didn’t Pythagoras wind up getting his head handed to him (literally) on the edge of a field of Fava beans for perpetuating practices like this?

(I exaggerate for effect, but not too much. Something like that went down on account of practices not too different from what’s being described here, another means of identifying closely with pure number…)

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I’m not very familiar with the story. Was it something to do with refusing to run through a field of beans?

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Here are some related memory biases that people might be interested in:

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His unwillingness to escape through the field is one part of the story.

But why he was being chased in the first place is the reason I connected it to this recent wave you’ve posted.

And the reason he was being chased relates, at least partially, to practices and beliefs around transporting oneself or fusing oneself with other levels of reality… in this case, mathematical realities.

Aristotle is almost too kind to him about it in his Metaphysics. Other commentators since have not been quite so kind.

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