Reality is Reality

All our lives we're told, You can do anything you set your mind to! But you can't. If that were true, we'd all be movie stars, pro athletes, and presidents. Personally, I'd be this year's Super Bowl MVP.
This form of self-delusion was launched as a major crusade in psychology in 1950s, with the advent of the power-of-positive-thinking movement. It was a good idea, but some people now take positive thinking all the way to la-la land. They say things like, "You create your own reality." Sorry. Not on this planet. You create your own perception and your own meaning, but reality is reality.

From the book What Happy People Know, by Dan Baker

From Mr. Robot

Is any of it real?
A world built on fantasy!
Synthetic emotions in the form of pills,
psychological warfare in the form of advertising,
mind altering chemicals in the form of food,
brainwashing seminars in the form of media,
controlled isolated bubbles in the form of social networks.
You want to talk about reality?
We haven't lived in anything remotely close to it since the turn of the century.
We turned it off, took out the batteries,
snacked on a bag of GMOs
while we tossed the remnants in the ever-expanding dumpster of the human condition.
We live in branded houses trademarked by corporations built on bipolar numbers
jumping up and down on digital displays,
hypnotizing us into the biggest slumber mankind has ever seen.
You need to dig pretty deep before you can find anything real.