How do I know if I'm not in a coma and none of this is real

God I swear I had a dream recently where there was a "Wake Up Party", like a political party based on the ideology that everything was all a dream and the solution to all the world's problems was simply to identify whose dream it was and wake xem up. Like they'd hold rallies where they would just chant "WAKE UP! WAKE UP!" with cowbells and banners reading "WAKE THE F#CK UP!" and they'd hold speeches in parliament encouraging "The Dreamer" to wake up and all sorts of stuff, and they were actually a super popular party just because people were that desperate.

not exactly this, but this

you're all little gay people stuck in my computer and i must free you with a rock

I'd be so fucking pissed if this life was the best dream my shitty brain could come up with.

I watched one (1) show were this was going on, and I think I've concocted a way of telling.

How much David Bowie are you hearing in your day-to-day life?

If you look at a TV screen or turn on the radio, do you hear doctors arguing about how best to treat you?

Have you shot back to the 70's or 80's to work as a cop?

I'd be pissed if this is a shitty dream with 90 hour work weeks

Internet is the proof that you're not in coma. You have endless supply of information on any topic imaginable and there's no way you have all that stored inside your head

Could you dream me up a little cash

The human brain doesn't have the capabilities of synthesizing the richness of life de novo. Dreams and hallucinations are transitory and ephemeral things. Longitudinal consistency makes the idea of such a long-term hallucination absurdly implausible.

What if all of existence as we know it is in the mind of an autistic child looking into a snow globe?

My god, it would be just like St. Elsewhere!

One way to determine if you're dreaming is to jerk off. Cumming doesn't happen in real life. It's only something you dream about. So if you successfully get yourself off, you know you're still asleep. But if you're just abusing yourself mercilessly to no effect, it's the real work and you're awake.

Please wake up babe, I miss you. It's been almost 4 years since the incident took you from me.

If it makes you feel any better, despite the fact that there is no way for me to prove that I have a subjective experience of the world distinct of your own (which would then prove you cannot be the only one experiencing it) I can at least say it's incredibly unlikely your brain would be able to come up with all of our unique personalities and behaviors.

I'd like to think you'd imagine something way cooler happening than climate disasters and genocide – like, even your nightmares probably aren't this kinda banal

If you were in a coma i would have a much more interesting and notable mustache that characters in the sitcom would later use to point out the outlandishness of the situation "but frank never had a 23' long handlebar mustache so heavily waxed it once put a llama's eye out!"

the answer to solipsism is that you have to engage with the reality you experience. it doesn't matter if it's a dream or not.

There's this web serial author I like and I remember reading a chapter of one of his stories and realizing that the voices of several characters who weren't the super pragmatic tactician overanalyzer main character... Were kind of tactician-y and were overanalyzing things to a high degree.

Unless you're a pretty good professional writer I think it'd be very hard to give believable speech patterns to a variety of people.

I mean honestly it would make as much sense as anything

Once upon a time, I dreamt I was an owl, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a owl. I was conscious only of my happiness as a owl, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then an enby dreaming I was a owl, or whether I am now a owl, dreaming I am an enby.

Zhuangzi_Owl

You don't. However would it change anything? No. It would not. If this isn't real it still has rules. We already know the rules are fake. Being an extra layer of fake doesn't change anything

Do those "how to know if your dreaming" strategies, like looking at the time on a clock, looking away, and then checking the clock again for consistency.

If you all are not real, I nevertheless appreciate getting to know you all here. I wish we could all live in the less doomer fantasy in my head.

bite yojur cheek it ouchie

There was a kids show with that plot called The Odyssey. The main character was fighting through a fantasy land that reflected their struggle to reawaken - I think I liked it? I can't really remember.

Here's a nicer existential musing (the second paragraph, but the first is related to it):

With some commentary:

A long time ago I used to work in roofing. I had a shit that would ride up my lower back (thankfully my pants held up, it just showed my back lol). After this long day in the sun, I felt this odd pain on my lower back. I got a fuckin sunburn. Ever since then, I've known solipsism can't be true because I didn't expect getting sunburned on my lower back.

Now, of course I was young and dumb so to me that was very powerful argument lol but as I've grown older the natural world has only been more surprising and unexpected and same with people. From a place of sincere humility - there is 0 chance any of this comes from within me somewhere, I am not that clever or smart. I could accept that perhaps I am a brain in a vat but the world of experience is definitely not a lie I'm telling myself

You'll know when you wake up

Oh man, what a relief that would be. It was all just my imagination

Doesn't matter, just keep going, outcome is pretty similar if its virtual or 'the real deal' when you can't tell. Its not good to dwell on this low vibe bourgeois Victorian thought.

Reminds me of dreams I have where I live a whole life with a career, or start a family etc, then I wake up back to this waking nightmare.

All of these comments are way more wholesome than expected

Need to do fanart of the obligatory dark and depressing Hexbear coma fan theory

(Also oh shit happy sitesiversary)

Jerk off and moan like a girl, cant do that in a coma

The lamp is real

Idk, pinch yersel?

if the lamp looks fine, them everything is ok. should it distort, then yeah, coma it is.

Please wake up im ready to be wind-fished

Have you tried propanol? I have a friend who used to be gripped by existential dread all the time. She's said taking propanol felt like her heart had just been released.

what does 'real' even mean? if you are experiencing something consistently, that responds to your interactions, its as real as anything else imo. does something being temporary or conditional on certain phenomena make it 'not real'? because in that case any living being is 'not real', a mere transitory hallucination that will fade and be forgotten in time like an unremembered dream. maybe the characters in your sleeping dreams do in fact have their own subjectivity independent of your own conscious identity, 'subsystems' running on your 'hardware', as mortal and fallible as any living person. does lucidity or clarity or vividness determine reality? if so, then what about people who experience vivid, clear, lucid 'hallucinations', or people (perhaps with conditions like alzheimers or dementia) who experience waking life as an incomprehensible whirlwind of phenomena? is a lucid dream 'more real' than the dreams you do not remember? 'reality' is kind of a meaningless concept, engage with what you are capable of engaging with and don't worry so much is my advice.

Nothing is real except for the endless void that this stimulative universe spawned out of, but I think we should enjoy our unreal reality, because it's all we've got.

Solipsism on the way to catatonia. The simulation is self-aware but only to the point that it realizes verification is impossible.

Have a donut. You'll feel better as long as you don't let the guilt of enjoying the donut weigh too heavily on your conscious.