[tryAtHome]

There are silver linings to the total fabrication of images and audio, whose veracity and presumed authenticity due to the threshold for forgery is perhaps only 100 years old, and soon to disappear.

One, people will be less swayed by emotionally charged imagery, and that's a good thing. That means less #FOMO and less rage at the perception that everyone is having fun but you. People can feel normal, just being normal again, because of the soon-to-be-wide-spread understanding that any and all photography, video or audio can be fabricated.

Two, media is manipulative regardless of who holds the keys to the castle, as most trusted information source. It's not a conflict of fake versus real. It's a conflict of one group of large personalities versus another set of polarizing characters, and external players fanning the flames. That one group can shout down another isn't great, because even if there is One True Narrative neither side presents it to us, and most of the smarter folks among us are already aware of this, and digest all information under such a context implicitly.

[rickycook]

i’m not sure about the less FOMO bit. people already are widely aware the many fashion magazines photoshop their cover images, but that doesn’t stop a huge number of people feeling terrible about themselves for not looking like that

[cko]

I agree, I think the human response to this stuff is instinctive and visceral. I consider myself a highly skeptical and disciplined mind but once in a while I catch myself believing stuff that doesn’t have much rigor behind it. And it takes me a while to catch myself. By then I might have already told a few people some “facts.”

It’s quite a mental load to question every source of data and have one’s guard up. Unless our own wiring evolves I can’t see the general population changing our data processing habits.