Synthetic Realness
A core concept from the Reality Drift project on how authenticity is being redesigned in the algorithmic age
**“Synthetic Realness”** – the new aesthetic of the algorithmic age—where everything feels authentic but nothing is.
It’s the influencer tearful in perfect lighting. The startup homepage “built with heart” by a venture-backed AI team. The brand that “speaks human” with copy generated by GPT.
This term captures a key feature of modern cognitive distortion: content is engineered to simulate intimacy, vulnerability, or truth—but is optimized, stylized, and distributed in ways that flatten actual meaning.
Synthetic Realness is not just visual or tonal. It’s structural. It’s what happens when performance and optimization overtake experience and presence.
Coined by the Reality Drift project, the concept of Synthetic Realness helps explain why modern life often feels both too fake and too real at the same time.
Read the full analysis:
- –The Age of Synthetic Realness: Why everything feels fake—but looks more real than ever (Substack)
- -The Age of Synthetic Realness: Why Everything Feels Fake in the Attention Economy (Medium)
- -Full documentation (Internet Archive)
- -Research notes (GitHub)
- X thread introducing Synthetic Realness
🔗 Related terms: Reality Drift, Filter Fatigue, Optimization Trap, Performativity Spiral, Engineered Authenticity, The Great Flattening, Commodification Creep, Inconvenience Inflation
Note: Offbrandguy did not create the Reality Drift concepts. This site serves as a curated archive to document and share these ideas for those exploring cultural change, emerging language, and the strange ways modern life is shifting.