Is it normal to be a camera?

a lot of my (non-lucid) dreams, at least 50% of them, i'm not really a person or any sort of entity. i'm more like a camera. everything is happening but none of its happening to me and i'm not taking part in any of it. it's like i'm watching the dream the same way i watch TV. why am i so withdrawn from my own dreams? does this happen to anyone else? I've actually only started getting into lucid dreaming the past month and haven't had an LD yet but i'm recalling my dreams better and right them down every morning and this is one of the things i've noticed.

I can't remember any specific ones, but I know I've had these kinds of dreams before. You're not alone, BlackNoise :).

I feel like, in these dreams, there could be some sort of message. Like something in waking life that you want to passively observe or your subconscious making you witness a scene which you weren't particularly in. An example could be like making you view discord between two close friends or something like that.

But seeing as how they're in about half your dreams, this could play greatly to your advantage. Use this for lucidity! Your lucid count will increase greatly!

Sweet dreams..

Yea totally normal happens to me about 1/3 of the time.

Happens to me in my less aware dreams. If I have a lack of sleep or lack of recall, I have a chance of having these. Not extremely many, but that is what I have noticed. As well as the more aware and vivid my dreams are, the more I am going to be doing something normal and mundane, a daily chore or hanging with people I know. This is why something like something being in the wrong place is usually more likely to tip me off rather than a talking dolphin while I am traveling through space.

I've had a fair few dreams like that, some of them entirely in a 3rd person view and some flitting between first and 3rd person. As the others have mentioned it does seem at least to me to correlate with low levels of awareness, as going in a 3rd person is pretty strange lol.

Sounds very normal to me. I'd say about 10% of my dreams are "camera-dreams", like I'm watching a movie of tv-show unfold.

A lot of my dreams take this form too. I think this is completely normal, given that this perspective mimics our experience of the TV shows and films we watch on a regular basis. We're used to seeing stories unfold through the "camera's eye."

This is actually how most people seem to experience dreams:
like events that take place in front of them, rather than worlds where they interact with the environment.

But personally I don't think there is any real difference - the only difference is that in your "camera dreams" you are less aware of yourself.
You feel the same way in waking life if you sit around somewhere and passively observe the surroundings.

There's a term for this, "disembodied observer," and I go into and out of this state in dreams. I'll agree with Sensei that this seems to happen more when awareness is at a low point.

I have these kind of dreams almost as often as dreams where I am myself or someone else. I never thought anything strange about it.

Happens to me all the time. I'd say i have the same 50% like you. Seems normal enough to me, and quite fun since its like a virtual reality movie. A confusing and random virtual reality movie...

Another “me too” here (as if that was needed, but oh well :P). I'm noticing a bit of a continuum—some third-person scenes are fairly “static” like watching a movie, but in others I seem to move around in space at will as if I'm actually there, though I'm still essentially an invisible silent observer that never directly interacts with or gets involved with anything in the scene.

I even had a recent dream where I became detached from my dream-character self and spent the remainder as an invisible “ghost” observer, and the dream character who had been me became more of a different person. This was a bit new for me, though I wouldn't be surprised if it happens frequently to other people.