The Death of Reality: Why Netflix’s In Your Dreams Is Not a Fairytale It’s a Diagnosis of Our Digital Coma

Chapter 1: The Great Dissociation

Look around you on the subway. Look around you in a restaurant. Look around you in your own living room.

What do you see?

You see the tops of heads. You see necks bent downward. You see eyes glazed over, illuminated by the blue light of a 6-inch screen. We are physically present, but mentally, we are gone. We have checked out.

We are living through an epidemic of Dissociation.

The real world has become loud, expensive, and painful. The rent is too high. The news is terrifying. The climate is shifting. So, what is our collective response? We are not trying to fix it. We are trying to leave it.

We are building the Metaverse. We are strapping Apple Vision Pros to our faces to layer a digital fantasy over our grim reality. We are spending billions of dollars on skins for video game characters while wearing sweatpants in real life.

In 2025, Netflix is releasing an animated film called In Your Dreams. It tells the story of Stevie and her brother Elliot, who magically travel into the world of dreams to find the Sandman and save their parents' marriage.

It looks like a whimsical adventure for children. It looks colorful and sweet.

But if you look at it through the lens of modern psychology, it is a dark allegory for our refusal to face pain. It is a story about the seduction of a world where you can control everything, contrasted with a reality where you control nothing.

Chapter 2: The Economics of Escapism

Why is the Dream World so attractive? Why are we seeing the rise of Rotting in Bed as a trend?

Because Reality has a barrier to entry.

To enjoy the real world, you need money. You need energy. You need social skills. You need to deal with rejection, awkward silences, and bad weather.

The Dream World...whether that is a literal dream, a video game, or an endless Tik Tok scroll is frictionless. It is cheap. It provides high dopamine with zero effort.

In the movie, the children escape into the dreamscape because their real life is falling apart. Their parents are fighting. The domestic stability is crumbling. The dream offers a Magical Fix.

This is the exact economic model of the 21st century. The system has made reality so unaffordable that the only luxury the average person can afford is a digital subscription. You will never own a home, but you can build a mansion in Minecraft. You will never travel to Paris, but you can watch a 4K vlog of it on YouTube.

We are being sold a Virtual Pacifier.

The elites are buying farmland and bunkers. The rest of us are buying VR headsets. In Your Dreams holds a mirror to this dynamic. It asks: Is the dream a sanctuary, or is it a cage?

Chapter 3: The Sandman is the Algorithm

In the film, the characters are searching for The Sandman a powerful entity who can grant their ultimate wish. They believe that if they can just find him, he will wave his magic wand and fix their broken family.

In our world, who is the Sandman?

The Sandman is the Algorithm. The Sandman is Big Tech.

We have convinced ourselves that technology will save us. We think AI will solve our loneliness (AI girlfriends). We think apps will solve our depression (Telehealth). We think social media will solve our need for community.

We are constantly praying to the Silicon Valley gods, asking them to grant us a wish. "Make me happy. Make me rich. Make me famous."

But in the movie, and in real life, the entity that controls the dream world is not your friend. The Sandman has his own agenda. The Algorithm has its own agenda.

It does not want to fix your problems. If your problems were fixed, you would put the phone down. It wants to keep you searching. It wants to keep you scrolling. It wants to keep you dreaming.

The Trap of the movie is the belief that the solution to a real-world problem (a failing marriage) can be found in a fantasy world. It can't. You cannot debug a relationship. You cannot code your way out of trauma.

Chapter 4: The Cowardice of the Comfort Zone

Let’s be honest about something uncomfortable.

Dreaming is easy. Waking up is hard.

We live in a culture that worships comfort. We have Door Dash so we don't have to cook. We have Uber so we don't have to walk. We have ghosting so we don't have to have difficult breakup conversations.

We are becoming a generation of cowards.

I don't say that to be mean. I say it because I feel it too. We are terrified of friction.

In the movie, the protagonists confront nightmares. But the real nightmare isn't a monster under the bed. The real nightmare is the conversation waiting for them at the kitchen table back home.

We use our Dreams (our screens, our games, our substances) to numb the pain of existence. But pain is a signal. Pain tells you that something is wrong. If you touch a hot stove, the pain tells you to move your hand. If you numb the pain, your hand burns off.

By escaping into the dream, we are letting our real lives burn.

We are ignoring our health. We are ignoring our finances. We are ignoring the decay of our local communities because we are too busy leveling up a character that doesn't exist.

In Your Dreams suggests that the hero's journey isn't about staying in the magical world. It's about gaining the courage to leave it.

Chapter 5: The Lucid Nightmare

There is a concept in dreaming called Lucid Dreaming when you wake up inside the dream and realize it isn't real.

Right now, society is having a Lucid Nightmare.

We are starting to realize that the digital world we built is not a paradise. Social media is making teenage girls suicidal. Video game addiction is causing young men to drop out of the workforce. The "Global Village" has turned into a global shouting match.

We are realizing that the Sandman lied to us.

When you watch this movie on Netflix, pay attention to the texture of the dream world versus the real world. The dream is saturated, fluid, and chaotic. The real world is likely gray, static, and hard.

The temptation will be to side with the dream. To say, Let them stay there It's better

But that is the trap. That is the logic of the drug addict. The high is better than the sober reality.

To be a functioning, powerful human being, you must reject the seduction of the simulation. You must reject the urge to dissociate every time things get hard.

The Verdict: Touch Grass

The message of 2025 is not Follow your dreams. That is a cliché.

The message of 2025 should be: Wake Up.

Use this movie as a reminder of what you are losing.

A Zoom call is not a handshake.

A Like is not a hug.

A dream is not a life.

The system wants you asleep. A sleeping population is a docile population. They don't riot. They don't demand change. They just consume content.

Defy the Sandman.

Watch the movie, enjoy the art, but then do something radical.

Turn off the TV. Put down the phone. Look at the person sitting next to you. And engage with the messy, painful, beautiful reality that is right in front of your face.

Because eventually, the dream has to end. And you want to be the one who opens your eyes, not the one who is shaken awake when it’s too late.