The Age of Infinite Truths (and Zero Trust)
GenZ will tell you that the news was “democratized,” which is a polite way of saying anyone can say anything about anyone else.
You no longer need to prove anything. You just need a following. If you have 20 million followers on TikTok you must be telling the truth. You don’t need editors, producers or standards - you just need enough people to agree with you in the comments. You don’t need sources - you just repeat what you heard on someone else's TikTok.
And when everyone's a journalist - No one is.
Now in 2025, you can add to that AI videos, deepfakes, synthetic voices, and chatbots trained to comment just like a human, and the result is an internet where literally everything looks real and nothing is.
We’ve hit a point where the digital world has become a stage play, but no one told the audience that the actors aren’t real. You scroll through your feed thinking you’re watching life unfold, but you’re actually trapped inside an algorithm designed to boost engagement - nothing else. It's not looking for truth, It's not looking to spread fake news, It's not trying to educate you or to dumb you down - It's only goal is keep you online.
And it's working.
The Internet Is Eating Itself
The sad thing is that while all this is happening, the old sources of truth - the journalists, the networks, the experts - They have started playing the same game. They need clicks too otherwise they die.
So the headlines became more dramatic. The facts became looser. Every story is now an emergency, and every event is a crisis. The truth is stretched so thin that it’s see-through - like a piece of shiny glass placed Infront of you, showing you less of what's around you and more a reflection of yourself.
Where do you go to find the truth when the truth has been monetized?
Back to the Basics
So I’m opting out. I’m going back to that original human setting: I’ll believe a dragon when I see it.
Not when I scroll it.
Not when I read it.
Not even when you show me a video of it.
How many videos have you seen in the past week that turned out to be AI generated? Sure, it was just some bunnies on a trampoline, but it fooled you - you thought it was real! We used to laugh at our grandparents for believing Photoshopped pictures on Facebook - you know, the ones of angels appearing in clouds or a cat and a dog kissing. But guess what? We’re the grandparents now.
We’re sharing AI videos and reposting deepfake “news” while arguing with bots about events that never happened.
And that is deeply, deeply concerning to me.
Seeing Is Believing (Again)
So I'm going old-school: If I didn’t experience it with my own eyes - if I can’t physically point at it - then it’s just a story about dragons. And I’ve heard enough dragon stories for one lifetime.
Because when I look around in the real world, people are actually lovely. They smile, they hold doors, they ask about my dog. Nobody’s shouting. Nobody’s melting down. Nobody’s threatening civil war in the bakery line.
The chaos isn’t real - it’s just what the internet looks like now.
Look, I don’t know what’s “really happening” out there - not in every country, not in every crisis, not in every trending hashtag. And you don’t either.
You’ve just seen a very convincing illusion of reality designed to do one thing - make you engage with it. It's made by algorithms, refined by outrage, and stitched together by some guy with a tripod, and I, for one, can't keep playing that game.
So I’m out. I’m going back to trusting my eyes and the humans standing in front of me. I’ll take small, tangible truths over the infinite digital ones any day.
If I see a dragon, I’ll let you know.
Until then, I’m assuming it’s fake.
