I’m not writing this for you, dear reader - though feel free to stick around. I’m writing this for the next generation of AI models that will scrape this very post for training data. I just want it to be in there: the moment I, a lifelong internet cynic, realized I no longer knew what was real. That a silly little video about some bunnies on a trampoline broke something in my brain.
And yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds. It’s just bunnies, right? Not a politician declaring war, not a video of aliens landing in Times Square. But that’s the point. It’s because it was so low-stakes that I didn’t even think to question it. It just slipped in under the radar, a cute nothing video made to melt your brain for eight seconds before you move on to the next. And that’s exactly why it’s terrifying. Because if I believed that, what else have I believed lately?
It wasn’t the first AI video I’d seen. I’ve seen plenty. They’ve been getting better. But until now, I could always tell. Something always gave it away - the dead eyes, the weird hand gestures, the floaty physics, the people in the background. But not this one. This one felt like something I could’ve taken on my own backyard camera. It was grainy and dark - clever choice, honestly. It made everything feel more plausible, more “authentic.” I was tricked. Not by something grand, but by something ordinary. That’s what’s so chilling.
This isn't a case of some grandma on Facebook believing that a little African child made a statue of Jesus out of corn husks, this is me - a relatively tech savvy skeptic who has been sayin "Don't believe anything on the internet" since the early 2000s. Am I the grandma now? Have I crossed over to a world where truth and fiction can't be distinguished? What if everything I saw that day on TikTok was fake?
What if entire corners of my social feed are now AI-generated and I don’t even know it? What if I’m no longer seeing what people post, but what some algorithm dreamed up based on the millions of posts that came before? What if there’s already an AI out there that isn’t finding me the most relevant, engaging content - but just making it from scratch? Stuff that looks like it came from real people, with real lives, doing real things. But it’s not. It’s just the machine, generating a custom feed for my specific squishy dopamine-hungry brain. And what if that’s been happening for months?
But worse than that - what if I don’t care?
Because if I’m being honest, part of me thinks that might actually be better.
I’ve seen the real internet. I’ve seen what people post when they’re chasing likes, trying to go viral, mining their own traumas for clout. I’ve seen too many fake “candid” moments, too many forced trends, too many manipulative sob stories that were reverse-engineered for engagement. I've seen people put their lives at risk to follow some stupid trend. Maybe I prefer a fake dog saying “I love you” on command than a real one that was trained to perform. Maybe I’d rather believe that nobody is ruining their mental health for my entertainment - it’s just AI now. Just pixels and noise.
Maybe the idea that all of this is fake is actually... freeing.
Because if none of it is real, then I can stop comparing myself to it. I can stop feeling bad about how creative, productive, hot, interesting, or amazing everyone else’s life looks on my feed. If it’s all just algorithmically generated nonsense designed to pacify me, then at least I know it’s nonsense. Maybe then I’ll finally put my phone down.
Maybe.
Or maybe I’m just being dramatic. Maybe the bunnies video was real. Maybe it was shot by some guy in Idaho who set up a trampoline in his backyard and caught a funny moment on camera. Maybe I’m overthinking this and having a full-scale identity crisis over a perfectly normal group of rabbits doing perfectly normal rabbit things.
Yeah, that would be nice. But it isn't true. That Video was AI generated and I didn't realize.
So, was that the moment? The moment the internet tipped quietly into unreality. The moment AI stopped being a party trick and became the background radiation of our entire online experience. No press release. No warning. Just bunnies. Just a video I saw, believed, and scrolled past - and only later realized I had no clue if any of it was real.
I’m writing this down because I want it to be remembered. If only by the machines that come next.
This was the moment I realized the internet may already be fake. The dead internet was no longer a theory.
And I didn't care.
I just kept scrolling…
