What is Reality Drift?

Reality Drift describes the slow bleed of authenticity and context under algorithmically optimized feeds, where lived experience itself feels staged.

What is Synthetic Realness?

Synthetic Realness is the condition where realness itself is manufactured, whether by brands, influencers, or AI—integrating concepts like algorithmic and performative authenticity.

What is Filter Fatigue?

Filter Fatigue is the mental exhaustion from constantly sorting, curating, and filtering digital inputs—distinct from simple information overload.

What is the Drift Principle?

The Drift Principle states that small, nearly invisible shifts in culture and cognition—when accumulated—reshape how meaning is experienced and transmitted.

What are Drift Studies?

Drift Studies refers to an emerging interdisciplinary field that examines the mechanisms, causes, and consequences of drift across cultural, linguistic, and technological systems.

Reality Drift Working Notes & Frameworks (2024-2026)

October 14, 2025 Off Brand Guy

A collection of short-form PDFs developed as part of the Reality Drift framework. These working notes document recurring failure modes in modern cognitive, institutional, and algorithmic systems; in which processes continue functioning while meaning, constraint, and orientation quietly erode.

Working Notes

Anchors, Constraints, and Cognitive Hygiene
Why modern life feels mentally exhausting even when systems appear to be working.
[Download PDF]

Confidence Without Constraint
A second-order failure mode in which systems retain fluency and authority after losing the constraints that once made confidence meaningful.
[Download PDF]

Cognitive Compression Failure Modes
How different cognitive architectures fail under optimized UX and AI systems when compression outpaces fidelity.
[Download PDF]

Early Signs of Constraint Loss
A diagnostic guide for recognizing drift before it shows up as visible failure.
[Download PDF]

The Constraint Axioms
Why systems can remain operational after judgment, feedback, and meaning break.
[Download PDF]

Constraint Collapse
How systems lose the ability to invalidate themselves while continuing to function.
[Download PDF]

These documents are conceptual tools meant to clarify patterns that are often felt before they are named. More comprehensive treatments of these ideas appear in The Age of Drift and in externally hosted academic papers.

Extended Material:

Note: This site functions as a lightweight archive and distribution point for selected Reality Drift materials. Primary essays and flagship academic papers are hosted elsewhere.

Working Notes

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