The phase "Welcome to the real world!" is notoriously uttered with condescension and outright Schadenfreude in response to someone else being unpleasantly disillusioned, or more deeply pained, by contact with the supposed "real world."
Few ask what they mean by "real" here. Alas, in line with the standard of "realism" David Walsh describes as what the conventional have in mind, it means "presenting humanity in the dimmest possible light"--what is revolting, the "real," and all else somehow not real. Society as a Hobbesian state of nature on steroids, with anything else "fake," to be believed in only by the contemptibly naive.
Some grasp of reality, that--and all too much in line with the stupid swagger and general nastiness of the phrases that do so much to befoul spoken and written English in our time.
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