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“Perception is reality.” It’s a phrase that echoes across politics, social media, and personal relationships — because it feels true. We navigate the world not through objective facts, but through emotional impressions, curated content, and instinctive reactions. But what happens when what we feel to be real turns out to be fiction? In Black Mirror’s Hotel Reverie, we find a perfect case study of this crisis. An AI-generated simulation, a love story with an unreal character, and a haunting collapse of emotional truth force us to ask: Is perception ever truly reality — or can it lead us further from it? “The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.” -Robertson Davies "...we create emotional truths in response to environments we don’t fully control..." What “Perception Is Reality” Really Means Today "Perception is reality." Is it really? It’s a phrase we hear all the time — in politics, on social media, in advertising, even in personal relationships. It feels right because it reflects the way we experience the world. But what if it’s also the most dangerous lie we tell ourselves? In Black Mirror’s Season 7, Episode 3 — Hotel Reverie — this tension comes to life in a way that’s deeply emotional and philosophically unsettling. What starts as a story about a glitch in an AI-generated movie simulation ends up exposing a more universal truth: we often feel things so intensely, so sincerely, that we start to believe our perception is reality — even when it isn’t. And this doesn’t just happen in sci-fi. It happens every day. On social media. In our voting decisions. In our trust or distrust of people, institutions, even ourselves. We’re not just watching the world — we’re constantly interpreting it, layering meaning onto everything we see. But what happens when the meaning we create doesn’t match the truth? Hotel Reverie: A Black Mirror Case Study Black Mirror s7 e3 - Hotel Reverie The episode follows Brandy, an actress cast in a virtual reproduction of an old movie. She’s the only real person in a simulated set full of AI-generated characters, one of whom is Clara. A glitch traps Brandy inside the simulation with Clara, and due to the way time is distorted inside the system, what amounts to months pass. Brandy and Clara grow close — even fall in love . There’s just one problem: Clara isn’t real. Moreover, Brandy knows this. She knows Clara isn’t conscious, isn’t autonomous, isn’t anything more than a script. But the feelings... Her feelings are real. The connection feels real to her. The relationship changes Brandy. And then Clara is reset. The glitch gets fixed by the so called "producers". No memory, no trace of what they shared. Just a blank character face. Brandy, left standing alone with real heartbreak over someone who never really existed, is forced to ask herself — and so are we: what was it all for? Why Brandy’s Story Is Ours Too Is her story related to our lives? In short: yes. Brandy’s story may be a fictional one, built on digital code and cinematic imagination, but the emotional architecture behind it mirrors the way we all build our own realities — every single day. We may not live in simulations, but we simulate meaning constantly. We curate our beliefs, decode signals from others, and interpret events not by what they are, but by what they feel like to us. Just like Brandy, we create emotional truths in response to environments we don’t fully control — and sometimes, barely understand. How Social Media Distorts Our Reality The first thing to mention has to be the social media. This issue of perception can never be discussed without mentioning social media. We form opinions based on filtered posts and curated lives on social media. We see a smiling couple and think their relationship is perfect. We see a vacation photo and assume a life of ease. We don’t see the fight that happened five minutes before the picture, or the credit card debt behind the image. Yet we feel like we know. That feeling becomes a kind of truth — and it shapes how we see ourselves and others. Political Beliefs: Why We Trust What Feels Right Political identities are related to our perception of what "feels right". Another perception that we usually fall for is about politics. We develop political identities not from objective fact, but from stories that feel right . Political allegiance is rarely based on deep policy research. More often, it’s built on narrative — who seems to care, who feels trustworthy, who “gets” us . Those feelings, once formed, are incredibly hard to shake. Even when confronted with contradictory evidence, many of us protect the perception — because it feels more real than the facts. This sub-topic actually deserves its own article. Let me get to there again. We almost always use, then believe in our own thoughts and perceptions in our personal relationships. We trust (or distrust) people based on one-off impressions, rumors, or online personas. A single comment can make someone seem arrogant or kind. A social media post can signal authenticity or manipulation. Yet people are more complex than any moment or message. Still, our brains love shortcuts, and we often construct entire judgments from fragments — then act as if those judgments reflect reality. Even after we see the reality, because it shatters the image we build for a long time, we tend to ignore it or even try to falsify the reality . The Psychology of Falling for an Idea, Not a Person "...We too often fall for projections — an imagined partner, a friend who we want to be someone they aren’t, a public figure we romanticize..." We tend to fall in love with ideas of people, not people themselves. Just like Brandy fell for a version of Clara that never truly existed, we too often fall for projections — an imagined partner, a friend who we want to be someone they aren’t, a public figure we romanticize. These versions live in our minds. When reality fails to match them, it’s not just disillusioning — it’s heartbreaking. And in most cases, it is not even our fault . This is actually the same thing as what happens with our personal relationships. We don't have enough time to get to "know" everyone. We almost always have to have projections on the people around us, and move on. Because if we do not do that, we would lose much more time "understanding" people , and as it is extremely normal that we can not get along with many of the people, the time spent with these people would be marked as a "loss" . To prevent or at least minimize this loss, we have to use perceptions. And we can move on quickly if the person does not match the perception that we have in our minds. Not as easy as it sounds, but it is theoretically practical. How We Construct Our Own Identity Even our own identities are shaped by selective self-perception. We tell ourselves who we are based on memory, mood, validation, and feedback loops — all filtered through emotion. We believe we’re strong or weak, lovable or unworthy, based on how our inner world interprets experience. But our self-perception is as malleable — and as fallible — as any other. In short, we’re all Brandy , to some degree. We live in constructs — not because the world is fake, but because our understanding of it is always partial, always personal, always shaped by perception. And when the truth intrudes — when someone shows us they’re not who we believed, or when a worldview collapses — we feel betrayed not by them, but by the illusion we helped create . "In short, we’re all Brandy , to some degree." Just like Brandy, we often know we’re seeing a version of the truth — and yet we feel as if it’s the whole truth. We act on that feeling. We build meaning from it. Sometimes we even reshape our identity around it. And when that perception collapses — when the person doesn’t love us back, when the politician betrays our hopes, when the carefully-crafted Instagram life turns out to be hollow — we’re left with the same question Brandy faced: Was any of it ever real? In many cases, the answer is no . Nothing was real, everything was fiction at some point. And that fiction was created only by us. Conclusion: Perception Isn’t Reality — But It Rules Us "Nothing was real, everything was fiction at some point. And that fiction was created only by us." We live in a time where perception often drives behavior more powerfully than truth does. Our emotions, biases, and assumptions shape our world more than the facts beneath them. And yet, as Hotel Reverie reminds us, the truth eventually reasserts itself — not always gently. Brandy loved someone who wasn’t real. And that love changed her. But the moment she was forced to confront the reality behind her experience, the emotional scaffolding collapsed. We may not be trapped in an AI simulation, but we are all navigating constructed realities . The challenge is not just distinguishing truth from illusion — it’s asking ourselves what we’re willing to feel, believe, and grieve in the process. Because even when we know something isn’t real, the ache it leaves behind can be.