Kish examined her own relationship with the internet, praising its ability to sustain openness in people yet vocalizing issues such as the fear of missing out and the pitfalls of social media engagement statistics.

[4] Moving from New York to Los Angeles was a crucial turning point for Kish, where constant social events left her with a sense of jadedness.

Conceptually, Kish has stated that the album achieves a stream of consciousness narrative that balances her darker sense of humor, in the "traumatic structure of a melodrama" that she likens to a soap opera.

[7] In an interview with Beat Magazine, Michael Cragg highlighted "Collected Views From Dinner" in particular for its humor, which was inspired by "any type of party or event".

"[4] "Existential Crisis Hour" was born out of the introspection that moving to Los Angeles afforded her, running through a series of questions pertaining to the meaning of life and one's purpose in it: "I had been reading a lot and I had been spending full days, nights, by myself and then—I wasn't really depressed, I was just like, 'What?

"[10] Kish expressed that album's title, Reflections in Real Time, is in relation to constantly updated activity streams, a major component of social media: "if you blink you'll miss something, or everything.

[12] In a positive review, Spin magazine's Anna Gaca called Reflections in Real Time a "revealing, sarcastic, and earnest" meditation on "both the immediacy of a social media-dependent society and her own narrowly focused lens: a snapshot of thoughts and concerns experienced between the ages of 23 and 24".

[14] Robert Christgau gave the album a two-star honorable mention in his column for Vice, indicating a "likable effort consumers attuned to its overriding aesthetic or individual vision may well enjoy".

[16] Pryor Stroud from PopMatters was less enthusiastic about songs such as "Hello, Lakisha" and "Existential Crisis Hour", feeling they detracted from the focus of an album that otherwise aptly portrayed the singer's "post-adolescent, Internet-age anxieties", set to music that joined "the implosive R&B of FKA Twigs to the attention-deficient dance-pop of Shamir".