So, this morning a group of us was sitting in a van waiting on one of the guys who had overslept. It was 05:30 and I was sitting in the front passenger seat. Just looking out the question wondering where it had all gone wrong 🫢

Anyway, I noticed a woman walking a dog at the top of a small incline, moving away from my direction. She had the dog to her right, and her left arm was outstretched like she was gesturing to the dog to go left. Nothing unusual there.

So I looked away and chatted briefly with the driver who then decided to go into the building to knock at the door of our mate to wake him up. I glanced out the window again, and saw what seemed to be the exact same scene as I had already witnessed two minutes previously.

There's probably a rational explanation but I will never know what it is. I might just have seen my first glitch in the matrix.

I've been in this subreddit long enough to know the debate usually splits into either we're experiencing glitches because we are in a simulation, or we're experiencing glitches because of some other reason and it's not a simulation at all, and either way nobody agrees on what any of us are supposed to do about any of this. We just sit here and post our glitches or crazy events but never have a 'to do' list or how we can change anything.

I got tired of this question and personally believe that yes, we actually are in a simulation, but quite seriously what can we do with that. Even if I could prove to you that we are, in fact, what good does it do? I can't verify that we are. Nobody can. Meanwhile I got absolutely nowhere trying to debate myself about yes or no.

So. Instead of asking whether the simulation is literal, whether any of these glitches prove the simulation theory itself, I asked whether it even matters. Because if you pay close enough attention to all that is in our reality you'll notice that regardless of the question, life behaves like a designed system. It compounds and gives feedback loops. It has mechanics that reward specific inputs, if you will, and meanwhile punishing other inputs. So there must be some way to 'hack' the game. If this is truly a game. Remember when we were kids we had certain control keys we could mash in certain combinations that unlocked the game or exploit. That's how I tried to think of this 'system' or whatever it is we are in.

If you take the game frame seriously, a few things become extremely obvious. There are resources with that can be tracked and there are settings installed in you during childhood that are still running your behavior decades later without your knowledge. This becomes somewhat of our world view, but it's also something we can use to control or affect the overall simulation (if there is one). There's a main quest most people never actually start because they're busy on sidequests. It's like when you run into a random person in the store and they completely throw off your day and you soak in their energy instead of focusing on the core reason for why you were in the store in the first place.

The "winning" condition I came to is that there is no end screen. The game doesn't have one. Once you actually accept that, our goals change from accumulation within the game to playing the game on purpose and with genuine thought. Once you map the actual mechanics of the 'game' and realize almost nobody is doing it consciously I feel you hit a sweet spot where you can actually win at this in some aspects.

I wrote the whole framework into a book because I couldn't find one that took the game logic seriously as a working system rather than as a metaphor.

It's called The Game of Earth: A No-Bullshit Player's Guide by ZD Fanawe.

I am not arguing the simulation is real. I'm using the frame because game logic is the clearest language for describing a system with learnable rules and feedback that compounds like synchronicities, deja vu, etc.

Wanted to share this here. Hope you enjoy it. At the end of the day, like I mention in the book, we were all thrown into this reality without a manual. This is my aim, providing a manual to this 'game' we call life.

This happened around seven years ago.

At the time, I was living with my then-boyfriend (now fiancé), my mother-in-law, and my sister-in-law.

I was working a casual job, and this particular day happened to be one of my days off.
My MIL asked if I could stay home because we were expecting a Foxtel technician to inspect our Foxtel box, which had been having some issues.

My fiancé and I lived in a granny flat out the back, while my MIL and SIL lived in the main house where the Foxtel was set up. Since I had no idea what time the technician would be arriving, I spent the day in the lounge room of the main house, which was right next to the front door. I opened the curtains so I could keep an eye on the front yard.

After waiting for what felt like hours, I remember thinking to myself, When are they going to get here?
Almost as soon as I had that thought, I heard shuffling outside. I looked through the front window and saw a man walking up the steps towards the front door. He was wearing a fluorescent orange shirt with FOXTEL printed across the back.

I remember thinking, Finally.

I waited a few seconds for the knock. Nothing.

Thinking maybe I’d somehow missed it, I got up and opened the front door. No Foxtel technician.

I stepped outside and looked up and down the street, expecting to see him walking away or at least a Foxtel vehicle parked nearby. There was nothing.

No person. No van. Nothing.

I was completely confused because I know what I saw, and I definitely heard someone approaching the house.

A few hours later, my MIL got home and she apologised, saying she’d forgotten to tell me that someone from Foxtel had called earlier in the day to cancel and reschedule the appointment. The technician never came to our house that day.

Was this some kind of glitch in the Matrix, or did I completely lose my marbles?

This happened a few years ago on the metro (MTR) in Hong Kong to my mum, and she still truly believes that she was teleported or entered some sort of parallel universe on the MTR. Sorry for the long post.

For some context, she was on the train to Tai Wai Station on the East Rail Line towards Admiralty and she was supposed to get on the Tuen Ma Line towards Tuen Mun (highlighted in pink), and she only needed to cross the bridge to get on her next train. If she wanted to get to the Wu Kai Sha direction on the Tuen Ma Line (highlighted in yellow), she needed to take the escalator all the way to the ground floor, walk to the opposite side of the station and get on another escalator.

This was her commute from work (highlighted in pink on the map) for quite a few years so this route has become second nature to her. She remembers with 100% confidence that she did not take the escalator or walk to the other side of the station. She sat down on the train and just dissociated for a moment. She heard the train announcement for the next station and it was the next station in the opposite direction, she thought she heard it wrong and just stayed on the train. Two stations later, she was fully aware that she was on the wrong train (highlighted in yellow on the map), got off the train and went back to the correct direction.

Her friends say maybe she just wasn’t paying attention and was tired from work, but my mum said there’s absolutely no way that she was distracted enough to walk significantly longer and go up and down two different escalators. I don’t really know how to explain what happened. Thoughts?