cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/questions/p/1229030/how-can-you-make-sure-that-my-post-that-you-are-reading-now-is-real-and-that-you-are-not

Well first, I don't have to be dreaming for it not to be real in terms of "true" - which you never know without fact checking. But like most people, I generally don't do that, I assume the information is correct unless something about it seems off enough to double check. But tbh this seems increasingly unreliable as the Information Age turns into the Misinformation Age.

Given that I was picking my nose in my sleep last night until it bled while dreaming that I was picking all four nostrils... WTF is real anyway?

'Cause if I were dreaming, I wouldn't still be living with my parents as a single ass loner working at dead end job and whom still can't afford his own place and doesn't do anything with his life 'cause 8-5 gives me no time.

Dreams feel different than reality. Reality feels more real.

Unless there is another deeper layer of reality that feels even more real that I have forgotten in this dream. Can't really rule that one out.

Years ago I looked into lucid dreaming and found that those communities have catalogged several actions that can act as "reality checks".

Generally in a dream, some things pretty consistently don't work right. Clocks/watches, mirrors, light switches. Check one of those and see if anything looks weird. If it makes no sense, probable that you're dreaming.

Try to remember the sequence of events that led to what you're doing now. In a dream, there wasn't anything before.

Or my personal favorite, plug your nose and then try to breathe through it. In a dream it will work.

There's quite a range of other methods out there too.

I've only done it a handful of times, but the times I asked myself "is this a dream?" and thought about it critically is when it generally worked. But I wasn't in like full control except one time I made a car fly, that was pretty cool.