Truman Show Delusion

This caught my eye: In a NYT piece on the rise of patients pleading that they are stuck inside a very sophisticated reality-TV show — no, really — and they want to get out, just like Jim Carrey did in the Truman Show.

Another patient traveled to New York Cit and showed up at a federal building in downtown Manhattan seeking asylum so he could get off his reality show, Dr. Gold said.  The patient reported that he also came to New York to see if the Twin Towers were still standing, because he believed that seeing their destruction on Sept. 11 on television was part of his reality show. If they were still standing, he said, then he would know that the terrorist attack was all part of the script.

I like the falsifiability of his ground-truthing test. Ground-truthing, that is examining a reported fact (yes, videos can be faked) yourself in first person, is not a bad practice.

Wanting to get out of, or “off your own reality show” makes total sense to me. I can see it becoming common.