Unpopular opinion: Deepfakes are making us doubt real footage too much

My friend showed me a clip from a real protest in Chicago last month, and three people in the group chat immediately called it fake. How do we even start trusting real evidence again?

4 comments

4 Comments

reese_rodriguez8627d ago

Honestly, my own mom sent me a video of a squirrel on a skateboard last week and I spent ten minutes looking for weird pixels. We're all so used to being tricked now that a real sunset could probably get flagged as CGI. Tbh, I don't even trust my own vacation photos anymore. It's like we need a notary public to follow us around and stamp everything as real.

taraross27d ago

Maybe we're overthinking it, @reese_rodriguez86. So what if a video is fake? It's just a squirrel on a board, not a news report. Getting tricked by a fun clip is harmless. The real problem is when people can't tell the difference on important stuff, not your mom's texts. Most of the time, it doesn't actually matter if something is real or not.

ray61726d ago

I read a study last year that said people check their phones over 200 times a day for facts. That constant fact-checking muscle just gets tired, so we either stop for the small stuff or doubt everything. It's a real mental tax we're all paying now.

corap2127d ago

Exactly. It's like we've broken our own trust meter for good. Now every single thing online gets the side-eye, even family photos. The doubt just leaks into everything. Saw a picture of my cousin's new baby last week and my first dumb thought was about weird shadows. That's not normal. We used to just see things and believe them. Now our first job is to be a detective for everything, big or small. It's exhausting.