Truth used to feel solid. You looked at a tree, I looked at a tree, and we both agreed it was a tree. But lately, reality feels like it’s liquefying. It's weird. You’ve probably noticed that two people can watch the exact same video clip and walk away with two completely opposite versions of what happened. That’s the politics of reality in action. It isn't just about who you vote for; it’s about the underlying infrastructure of how we perceive the world.
Think about the "Dress" that went viral years ago. Some saw gold, some saw blue. That was a harmless glitch in our visual processing. Now, apply that same neurological breakdown to climate change, election results, or economic data. We aren't just arguing about opinions anymore. We are arguing about the fundamental "is-ness" of things.
The Death of the Shared Script
We used to have three major news networks and a local paper. That was the script. It wasn't necessarily "the truth"—it was often limited and biased—but it was a shared reality. Today, the politics of reality is shaped by what researchers call "epistemic fragmentation."
Essentially, we’ve moved from a centralized reality to a choose-your-own-adventure model.
Silicon Valley plays a huge role here. Algorithms don't care about what is true; they care about what keeps you scrolling. If you believe the earth is flat or that a specific economic policy is a secret plot, the algorithm will feed you a steady diet of "evidence" to support that. This creates a feedback loop. Your reality becomes a fortress. Honestly, it’s exhausting to try and peek over the walls of someone else’s fortress when their "facts" look like your "fakes."
How Our Brains Betray Us
Our biology is part of the problem. Evolution didn't design us to find the objective truth of the universe. It designed us to survive in small tribes.
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In a tribal setting, being "right" is less important than being "aligned." If your tribe believes the moon is made of cheese, and you start pointing out it's actually rock, you might get kicked out. For an ancestral human, being kicked out meant death. So, our brains developed "motivated reasoning." We filter out information that threatens our social standing or our identity.
Cognitive scientist Hugo Mercier argues that reason isn't for finding truth—it’s for winning arguments. We use our intelligence to justify what we already want to believe. This is why the politics of reality is so stubborn. You can’t just give someone a spreadsheet of facts and expect them to change their mind. Their brain literally views those facts as a physical threat to their social identity.
The Architecture of Post-Truth
The term "Post-Truth" was the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year back in 2016, but we’re living in its final form now. It’s not just about lying. Politicians have always lied. This is different.
In the current politics of reality, the goal of many actors isn't to make you believe a specific lie. It’s to make you doubt that truth even exists. If everything is a "deepfake" or "fake news," then you stop trying to figure out what’s real. You just default to your team.
- Gaslighting as a Policy: This is when a leader says something happened, then denies it happened while the video is playing. The goal is to fatigue your brain.
- Data Overload: Flooding the zone with "shit," as Steve Bannon famously put it. When there's too much information, we give up and follow our gut.
- Institutional Rot: When people lose trust in the CDC, the courts, or the university system, reality loses its anchors.
Look at the way deepfakes are currently impacting the 2026 landscape. We’ve reached a point where even when a real, incriminating video surfaces, a person can just say, "That’s AI," and half the population will believe them. That is the ultimate power in the politics of reality: the "liar’s dividend." You don't even have to prove you didn't do it; you just have to suggest the evidence is a digital hallucination.
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The Role of Language
Words are the bricks of reality. If you change what a word means, you change the world.
Think about how terms like "freedom," "justice," or even "violence" are used now. For one group, a protest is "mostly peaceful"; for another, it’s an "insurrection." For one person, "equity" is fairness; for another, it’s "discrimination." We are using the same dictionary but speaking different languages. This linguistic drift makes the politics of reality almost impossible to navigate because we can't even agree on the definitions of the problems we're trying to solve.
Breaking the Reality Bubble
So, how do you actually live in this mess without losing your mind? It’s not about being "neutral." Neutrality is often just a way to avoid the hard work of investigation. It’s about "epistemic humility."
That’s a fancy way of saying: admit you might be wrong.
Most people think they are immune to propaganda. They think other people are the ones being brainwashed. But if you think you’re too smart to be fooled, you’re the easiest person to fool. The most dangerous part of the politics of reality is the smugness it generates.
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Practical Steps for Real-World Navigation
You have to curate your inputs. If your entire news feed is designed to make you angry, you aren't being informed—you're being farmed.
- Check the Source of your Outrage. If a headline makes you want to scream, wait twenty minutes before sharing it. High-emotion content bypasses the prefrontal cortex. It’s a hack.
- Follow People You Disagree With. And I don't mean the crazy ones. Follow the smartest, most reasonable versions of the "other side." If you can't state their argument in a way they would agree with, you don't actually understand the reality of the situation.
- Understand "Lateral Reading." Instead of just reading an article, open a new tab and search for who owns the site. Search for what other people are saying about that specific event. Don't stay on the original page.
- Value Local Reality. The politics of reality is often loudest on the internet. In your actual neighborhood, things are usually a lot more nuanced. Talk to your neighbors. Go to a city council meeting. Real-world interaction is the best antidote to digital tribalism.
We are currently in a period of intense transition. The digital revolution has done to information what the printing press did to religion—it’s broken the old hierarchies and left us in a state of chaos. Eventually, we’ll develop new norms and new ways to verify what’s real. But for now, we’re in the "great blurring."
Recognize that the politics of reality is a struggle for your attention and your identity. The moment you realize that your perception is being targeted is the moment you can start to take it back. Stay skeptical, stay curious, and for heaven's sake, get off the "recommended for you" feed once in a while.
The most effective way to navigate the modern world is to treat your attention like a finite resource. Every time you engage with a "rage-bait" post or a baseless conspiracy, you are voting for a fractured reality. To change the politics of reality, start by refusing to participate in the most obvious distortions. Seek out complexity. Embrace the fact that most truths are messy, boring, and don't fit into a 280-character post. That’s where the actual world lives.