Freshman Wonders If Life Is 'Video on Repeat' After Year of Recurring Familiarity

THE INTERNET — A Reddit user posting to r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix has asked the board's readers whether their life is "just a video on repeat," describing a run of déjà vu experiences that the author says has grown more frequent and more vivid.

According to the post, the feeling is no mere sense of a place seeming familiar. The author writes that it is as though the same day were lived twice, with foreknowledge of what a friend will say or which subject will come up. The author adds that these predictions, in their experience, tend to come true.

The writer places the count at roughly nine to twelve episodes this year, a figure described as high even by the author's own standards. The post notes that the author recently began high school, with new people and a new start.

One episode is singled out. On a rainy day when students could not go outside, the author says everything clicked into place: the postures, the people, the words. This occurred, the post stresses, on the third or fourth day of school, before the author even knew the teacher's name.

The author reports being the only one to notice any pattern, and describes weighing whether to deliver an anticipated reply or to alter the script. The post insists these are not dreams, citing the sensations of waking, touching the bed, and feeling heat and cold.

The post offers no explanation beyond its title question, and closes with the hope of not being alone in the experience. Déjà vu is, as the author notes at the outset, a familiar phenomenon, and the board's readers had yet to settle the matter at the time of writing.