Part of the Reality Drift framework (2023–2026) by A. Jacobs.
The Drifted Self is the version of a person that forms when identity, attention, language, and self-perception begin adapting to mediated systems more than to lived reality.
It is not a fake self in the simple sense. It is a self shaped by platforms, metrics, algorithmic feedback, social performance, and AI-mediated language until the person becomes better at navigating representations than sensing what is true.
Within the Reality Drift framework, the Drifted Self describes how systemic drift becomes personal.
Reality Drift is not only something that happens to institutions, technologies, or media environments. It also happens inside cognition.
As more of life passes through optimized feeds, dashboards, prompts, profiles, and symbolic interfaces, the self begins to respond to the environment of representation.
Over time, the person may still feel coherent, productive, and expressive while becoming subtly less grounded in direct experience.
The Drifted Self is an outcome of Cognitive Drift.
Cognitive Drift describes the process by which thinking adapts to systems instead of reality.
The Drifted Self describes the identity that emerges after that adaptation becomes habitual.
The self does not disappear in mediated environments. It reorganizes around what the environment rewards, reflects, and remembers.
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