Reality shifting (RS) is a trendy mental activity that emerged abruptly following the flare-up of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and seems to be practiced mainly by members of the post-millennial generation. RS, described as the experience of being able to transcend one’s physical confines and visit alternate, mostly fictional, universes, is discussed by many on Internet platforms. One RS forum boasts over 40,000 members and RS clips on some social media platforms have been viewed over 1.7 billion times. The experience of shifting is reportedly facilitated by specific induction methods involving relaxation, concentration of attention, and autosuggestion. Some practitioners report a strong sense of presence in their desired realities, reified by some who believe in the concrete reality of the alternate world they shift to. One of the most popular alternate universes involves environments adopted from the Harry Potter book and film series. We describe the phenomenology of RS as reported online and then compare it to related phenomena such as hypnosis, tulpamancy, dissociation, immersive and maladaptive daydreaming, and lucid dreaming. We propose a theoretical model of interactive factors giving rise to RS, and conclude that it is an important, uninvestigated emerging phenomenon and propose future research directions.

现实转变（RS）是一种流行的心理活动，在 2020 年 COVID-19 大流行爆发后突然出现，似乎主要由千禧一代后的成员进行。 RS，被描述为能够超越个人的物理限制并访问替代的（大多是虚构的）宇宙的体验，在互联网平台上受到许多人的讨论。一个RS论坛拥有超过4万名会员，一些社交媒体平台上的RS片段浏览量超过17亿次。据报道，包括放松、注意力集中和自我暗示在内的特定诱导方法可以促进转变的体验。一些实践者报告说，他们对自己想要的现实有强烈的存在感，而一些相信他们所转移到的另一个世界的具体现实的人将其具体化。最受欢迎的平行宇宙之一涉及从哈利·波特书籍和电影系列中采用的环境。我们描述了网上报道的 RS 现象，然后将其与相关现象进行比较，如催眠、催眠术、解离、沉浸式和适应不良的白日梦以及清醒梦。我们提出了引起 RS 的交互因素的理论模型，并得出结论，它是一种重要的、未经调查的新兴现象，并提出了未来的研究方向。