It is possible. But if so, I'm not so sure about the NPCs. Surely you're not the only playable character, right? That would sound like a literal main character syndrome to me ;)
this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2026
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I had an uncanny experience like that as a teenager with an "NPC like" character. I was walking around a small cul-de-sac, and there was an older woman standing in front of her house, completely frozen in place, just staring off into the distance blankly.
As I'm walking past she suddenly looked at me and barked out rather aggressively "Do you know what time it is?"
I checked the time on my phone and told her it. She snapped "NO! It's [completely different time]", she sounded angry as hell, I actually got a little scared.
Then she just glared at me in complete silence.
I started walking away and she just turned her head, watching me, but not saying another word.
She didn't move from the spot she was standing on.
That said I blame dementia, psychosis, drugs, or otherwise failing mental health before I'd jump to the nothing is real or everything is a simulation conclusion, but it was definitely such an uncanny feeling situation that it stuck with me to this day.
My mom told me my older brother ate one of those... unfortunately he's still here and tormented me for most of my childhood
Y'know some days I've thought the same thing, especially with the absurdity of the last few years. To the incident you described, I think that person may very well have been mentally disabled, or on drugs, or otherwise mentally "out of it". The human brain is incredibly complex and finicky, and that makes sense considering it's really intricate meat that is zapping itself with electricity.
In my own life I've seen a fair number of people who seem fully tapped out. I believe this trend has been amplified by the overstimulating nature of our media landscape; the rise of short-form content; the normalization of outsourcing thinking to "AI" processes; the general stress and tension in the world...
It is always possible that none of this is real, but then everything you know to be real and normal is from this fake reality. You have no way to identify a real anomaly. You still do exist and you do matter, because what you sense, think and live through is your reality.
Sees a mentally unstable guy, thinks the entire world is a simulation.
Humanity may not make it, lol. :)
I'd assume drugs if I saw a guy staring at a vending machine for ages. That's "took too much of something that doesn't leave the system fast" behavior. Possibly he wanted to get something from the vending machine, but couldn't hold on to the thought for long enough to go through the process. Perception of time gets fucked on those sorts of drugs, so he has no idea he's been there for however long. The behavior sounds specifically like that of people I've known who accidently took a higher dose of edibles than intended.
The world is real but we perceive it with a brain that can read signals of it imperfectly if something goes wrong in there. That leads to strange behaviors like you described.
It's philosophically impossible to know if the world is "real" unless you reduce the word to an axiom. Just as it's impossible to prove tbat all of existence wasn't created yesterday morning at 1115z.
Much more useful is to accept both for the sake of contemplation, and then go on to ask the subsequent question "so what?"
If you experience things like this regularly, it might be a good idea to check in with a psychiatrist. There are plenty of ways our brains can mess with our perception, without us realizing it.
Sex is way too enjoyable for this to be a poorly coded simulation.
I think you just saw someone who needs either a break or some better mental health care.
Maybe everything else is so poorly coded becsuse the developer focused entirely on making sex the fun overhyped gimmick. Like the chainsaw guns in Gears of War.
if we were living in a simulation, what would that change for you?
assuming we're not in a simulation, we already can't prove anyone but ourself is conscious, and even that's a stretch
my man!
I'm not sure what difference it'd genuinely make. I am as real as I am.
Yeah but that’s what makes it a fun thought experiment imo is thinking of how the simulation accounts for our reality.
If I’m a Sim in The Sims equivalent, my dying results in the exact same outcome it does in The Sims; my avatar is gone and not resurrectable (without mods).
Maybe the Mandela effect is when we’ve moved servers from one that had different DLC.
God/Jesus/all prophets was just the admin visiting.
Ghosts are bugs in the code only visible to some of us because we have the residual DLC files that weren’t properly removed.
We can’t see far into space because the draw distance is short.
God, I hope so. How bleak would it be if this were baseline reality?
You are still on your free trial period, so this is a demo.
Lol I think I posted something like this before.
First existential crisis? I had like 10 of these ready.
My life is so bizzare because
I WASNT SUPPOSED TO BE BORN
Literally narrowly even lived to birth since there was One Child Policy and CCP made it their mission to terminate pregnancies if the woman already had gave birth to a child. So I was my mom's second child... if they found out I would've been deleted so quickly, they'd grab my mom and forced abortion.
Feel like as if its scriped.
Like what are the odds.
Did someone make this simulation and added this to my "character sheet" for funsies?
Movie character "crazy backstory" type of shit.
Still crazy to think about the fact that I am not even supposed to be alive walking around in this world.
Every time I think I'm just chillin, BOOM crazy shit happens.
A fucking PLANE CRASHED near where I live... what the fuck... must be a scripted event
So surreal
Edit: Also OP Username checks out
Someone having a stroke doesn't realize what's happening to them. Their only hope is to encounter someone who can read the symptoms - - maybe that's not what happened but it's a million times more probable than your crazy explanation.
Let me guess. You game.
Everything in life is training for the next day. Spending so much time training yourself to expect things to follow the common logic of games leads to that expectation 'leaking' out of its context. If you spent all day watching porn, eventually, you'd expect life to follow porn rules. If you spent all day on 4chan, you'd expect people to act like meme-brained incels. Even something like doing sudoku teaches you to see numbers in boxes and look for the pattern to fill in other boxes. Where someone who spent their life immersed in religion might see spiritual possession, you see NPC behaviours. This is conceptual framing, a.k.a. ideology.
As for that particular guy, based just on the info given here, I'm guessing drugs. Work sucks. Some people do drugs about it.
I wish I could do drugs about it
I don't mean to alarm you but you may have lost your mind, not sure what else to suggest but a thearpist🍀
I pretty much live inside my own head so it's possible I could be someone's NPC just staring at a wall because I am currently engaged in mental gymnastics.
We cannot be living in a simulation because the amount of energy to simulate and calculate all the possible atoms, quarks, and other particles and all their simultaneous interactions every fraction of a millisecond would far exceed an exponent of zillions upon zillions of all the possible energy that could ever exist. We wouldn't even begin to be able to comprehend anything.
"Well... the forerunners' physics operate differently, duh!"
Uh... if you were to believe that delusion, then I wouldn't know what to tell you; then you could just rig whatever answer you want to anything. And even if that were true, then the "real" world must be so vastly different from anything we could possibly connect with or perceive that it wouldn't be relatable anyway and would therefore be worthless or just academic to think about. I guess you don't want to hear it but this is unfortunately our actual life and that guy was just weird. Ask him if you can buy any potions from him next time or something.
The idea is that you would just need to simulate that level of detail if someone actually looks. You don't have to simulate any atoms if nobody can see them. Computer games do this all the time to save ressources.
There is no real argument against a simulation just as there is none against god being an alien, just the probability is not in favour of it.
But I also believe life is just kinda what it is.