AI is everywhere right now. Videos, images, voices. Things that look real but aren’t, and most of the time the reaction is the same: “That’s not real.”
We say it quickly now, almost automatically. And to be fair, sometimes we’re right. A lot of it isn’t real.
But I’m starting to wonder what happens when that becomes our default response to everything.
We’ve all seen them by now. Fake speeches. Videos of politicians saying things they never actually said, but it looks real enough to make you stop for a second. Celebrity clips that turn out to be completely manufactured. Footage of events that never happened, or clips pulled from video games passed off as real life.
A couple of days ago I wrote about how false videos and images flooded the timeline within minutes of the Iran war starting.
It’s getting worse. The volume of AI-generated “battle footage” now circulating from Iranian and proxy accounts is accelerating.
Entire fake narratives… https://t.co/c8xP83KmnU pic.twitter.com/ehXuwEl6pF
— Gerald Posner (@geraldposner) March 13, 2026
From Harmless Clips to Habitual Doubt
Then there are the lighter ones. The funny videos. The ones you know aren’t real, but they’re close enough to reality that you still do a double take. A person doing something impossible. An animal acting human. Something just slightly off, but not enough to immediately dismiss.
When AI first started showing up in a real way, we were all told the same thing: don’t believe everything you see. Videos can be faked. Images can be manipulated. Voices can be cloned.
And that was good advice. People needed to understand what was possible. They needed to slow down, question things, and not take everything at face value.
That message got through. It worked.
Because now that’s exactly what people do. They see something and the first reaction isn’t to understand it, it’s to dismiss it.
“That’s not real.”
PSA: Ai has reached a level where it can be indistinguishable from reality on social media.
You should adjust your mental filters to include the possibility that EVERY video you see online is fake.
That’s just the truth of where we are at now.pic.twitter.com/42CdqJKdc4
— Brick Suit (@Brick_Suit) February 15, 2026
The Line Between Questioning and Dismissing
At first, it feels like you’re getting smarter about it. You’re not falling for everything you see. You’re catching things. Questioning things. And sometimes, you’re right.
But after a while, it doesn’t stop there.
That response starts to become automatic. Not just for the fake stuff, but for anything that doesn’t fit what you expect. Anything surprising, uncomfortable, or inconvenient can be brushed aside the same way.
Skepticism is a good thing. It always has been. You should question what you see and verify things before you accept them. That’s part of being informed.
I used to tell my kids something all the time: don’t believe everything you see, and only half of what you hear. It was a way of teaching them to be careful, to think, and to not take everything at face value.
But that kind of advice assumes there’s still something real underneath it all, something you can sort through if you take the time. Now I’m not so sure we’re teaching that anymore.
Because there’s a difference between skepticism and reflexive disbelief.
When Truth Becomes Optional
Skepticism makes you pause and look closer. Disbelief shuts it down completely.
And when that becomes the habit, something else starts to shift.
If everything can be questioned, then nothing has to be accepted. Real things can be dismissed just as easily as fake ones. A real video can be waved away. A real statement can be ignored, not because it’s been proven false, but because it’s easier to say it isn’t real at all.
That’s where this gets dangerous.
Truth stops being something you work to understand and starts to feel optional. Something you can accept or reject based on whether it fits what you already think.
And that doesn’t just affect what we see online. It starts to change how people think.
When people stop trusting what they see, it doesn’t stay confined to videos and headlines. It spills into everything else. Conversations get harder. Agreement gets harder. Even basic facts start to feel unsettled.
Because if nothing can be trusted at face value, then everything becomes negotiable.
How long before AI develops a mental disorder? 😵💫
AI is already using its imagination—synthetic training data—to rewrite its own code, mimicking human decision-making. @ScottAdamsSays: if AI’s imagination goes rogue, like those suffering from TDS, it could spiral into digital… pic.twitter.com/2NYHvJJMvE
— jay plemons (@jayplemons) June 20, 2025
When Doubt Starts to Shape How We Think
You’re not just questioning a video anymore. You’re questioning intent, motives, and whether anything presented to you is real or manipulated in some way. It doesn’t take long for that to start planting a seed of doubt, not just about what you’re seeing online, but about everything.
Over time, that kind of thinking makes people more guarded and more cynical. They become less willing to accept anything outside of what they already believe, and once that sets in, it’s hard to reverse.
Because now you’re not just sorting truth from fiction.
You’re choosing what feels true.
And those are not the same thing.
It also creates a kind of paralysis. If everything could be fake or manipulated, then what do you actually act on? What do you respond to? What do you take seriously?
At some point, people either shut down completely or retreat into smaller, safer circles where everything feels familiar and agreed upon.
That’s where the real shift happens. Not in the technology itself, but in how people respond to it.
And maybe that’s the part we’re not thinking about.
We have officially entered the phase of not being able to distinguish reality from AI- and that’s scarier than anything!!!!
If this is a real video – it’s strange. Filmed at an interesting angle with a blurred background, and inability to totally see the background and other… https://t.co/jhmcHzPcdD— Dr. Shannon Kroner (@drshannonkroner) March 15, 2026
A Society That Can’t Agree on Reality
You don’t need some coordinated effort behind the scenes for this to have an effect. The environment itself does the work. The more fake content people see, the more doubt it creates, and the more doubt there is, the harder it becomes to trust anything at all.
Whether anyone is deliberately pushing that outcome or not, it’s hard to ignore how useful it could be. A population that questions everything is a population that can’t easily agree on anything.
A society that doesn’t trust what it sees doesn’t just become skeptical. It becomes divided in a deeper way, not just over opinions, but over reality itself.
And once people stop sharing a basic sense of what’s real, it becomes almost impossible to have meaningful conversations, let alone solve anything.
It’s smart to question what you see. It’s responsible to do your own research and not take everything at face value.
But if we reach a point where the default response to everything is “that’s not real,” we’re not becoming more informed.
We’re just becoming harder to convince of anything at all.
And that might be just as dangerous.
