Sometimes there's a particular
sunset, group of
trees,
moonrise,
lake, or other bit of the
great outdoors that strikes me as looking utterly
unreal. It happens when there are too many
colors, or the arrangement is too precise, or the
shadows are sharper than shadows should be. Like it had been painted by an
artist with brilliant technique that just didn't know when to stop --
reality as implemented by
Bob Ross.
I learned this response from my mother, who pointed out fakeness to me from the car, while on camping trips, and in our own back yard. Her eye had been trained by years of looking at lousy art to identify excess, and she kept that point of view even when what she was seeing was natural. I think she wanted me to be able to look at things the same way so if I ever became an artist I wouldn't make those mistakes. Funny thing is, most of the things she and I identify as "fake," most people would see as being "beautiful." Beauty that neither of us can get any pleasure out of because of our own preconceptions about beauty.
Violence isn't the only stimulus you can become desensitized to, I guess.