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If you could have any life you wanted, in any universe, fictional or real, what would you most desire? For many teenagers, reality shifting is a way to make their dreams come true. Reality shifting, or just shifting, is a practice that shot to popularity over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Its rise parallels the increasing popularity of TikTok, where it gained much of its prominence. On “shift-tok”, popular creators will instruct their audience on how to project their consciousness into a version of themselves in a different reality. Popular destinations include famous pop-culture universes, such as Harry Potter or Marvel, as well as other “dream realities” containing better or more famous versions of themselves, complete with a celebrity life and a Hollywood husband.
Shifting sounded like a fever dream when I first heard about it. How could someone simply fall “asleep” in the real world and wake up in a fictional universe next to Draco Malfoy? But the more I read about shifting, watched shifting TikToks, and scrolled through shifting tips on my Instagram explore page, the more real it seemed. The genre of shifting TikToks is diverse, with a wide range of video subjects - from rating things different characters have said to them in a dream reality, to motivation for those who haven’t shifted yet, to tutorials for different methods of shifting, the amount of content seems never-ending. I was incredulous that people were actually believing those who claimed to have shifted, but it was clear that everyone in the shifting community had one-hundred-percent unwavering faith that shifting was real and possible.
Just by definition, shifting seems like something straight out of a conspiracy theory. The reasoning that the shifting community seems to follow is that if people have done it, that must mean it’s possible, right? Sadly, there’s no solid scientific evidence on whether or not shifting is a real thing. I’ve read various articles trying to explain what happens to the people who say they’ve successfully shifted - many experts have said that it’s a type of meditation, lucid dreaming, or “transliminal experience” - but at the end of the day, the only real proof is the word of the people who’ve done it.
“Is reality shifting real?” is a loaded question that could have many different answers, depending on how you define it. Is it possible to actually move your consciousness and state of mind to a different, possibly fictional, universe? No, and anyone with common sense could probably tell you that. However, is it possible to experience the “effects” of shifting, to live and interact with people and characters in your dream reality? Maybe - it’s all up to the method you use and whether it makes you lucid dream or fall into a transliminal experience.
All in all, “reality shifting” is something that doesn’t hurt anyone. If you want to spend your free time living out your days as Draco Malfoy’s girlfriend, that’s fine by me. But the fact still remains that once you wake up, you’re going to be the same person you were before.
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