Culture and Digital Life: Reality Drift Applications

A collection of Reality Drift application notes examining how modern cultural, digital, educational, and service systems become increasingly optimized around representations, metrics, and incentives while gradually losing alignment with the realities they were designed to represent. Topics include credential inflation, customer service, dating apps, dead internet theory, platform decay, information overload, filter fatigue, and synthetic realness. Contents: • Credential Inflation, Skills Gaps, Signaling Theory, and Reality Drift• Customer Service, Wait Times, and Service Drift• Dating Apps, Authenticity, and Synthetic Realness• Dead Internet Theory, Content Farms, SEO Spam, and Reality Drift• Enshittification, Platform Decay, and Reality Drift• Filter Fatigue, Information Overload, and Burnout• Synthetic Realness, Performativity, and Authenticity Crisis