Social reality checks

One interesting thing to do with reality checks is to use social interactions to check whether you are dreaming or not. Social interactions are complex phenomena and could trigger a high awareness in dreams. The goal of this post is to explore various ways of integrating a social aspect in the reality checking process (which for most people, including me, is a private thing).

One extreme thing to do is to ask people (including strangers) whether you are dreaming or not. If anyone has the courage to do this, go ahead and see where this leads to!

An easy thing to do is explain to your friends what lucid dreaming is and then convince them to ask you whether you are dreaming during the day.

I bought the { sorry, no links to commercial sites - link removed by staff} t-shirt, and while this is a great start, I think we should strive for more.

Please tell us your ways to increase the social element for reality checks in the comments. I'm excited to see what you will come up with!

One thought I have is to have a reality check buddy you can text to. Periodically text "am I dreaming"? The interesting thing is you probably will be unable to successfully send the message if you are dreaming so that will confirm the dream state

First of all, I really want that shirt! But that link doesn't seem to work for me. :( (EDIT: Nevermind, I noticed other stuff wasn't loading as well so I just renewed my IP. It works now!)

And that's an excellent idea. I'm an incredibly socially awkward person, but because of my job I spend a good portion of my day communicating with people. Thus most of my mental energy is spent on not botching these social interactions. Doesn't leave much room for retaining the awareness I need for practicing lucidity! But if I could somehow build a reality check into these interactions, it might make it easier.

For instance, in waking life I am never completely at ease when interacting with another person, but in dreams I do not feel the same sense of discomfort. I may be able to use this feeling of discomfort (or lack thereof if it's a dream) as a queue to question reality.