I couldn’t help but wonder… are we all being catfished by reality now?
I was doomscrolling on the train today, nothing dramatic, just the usual content: animals doing human things, humans doing questionable things. At some point I laughed at a video that turned out to be AI-generated. It got me. Fully. And I’m Gen Z. Well, late 90s Gen Z, which is basically a micro-generation that remembers dial-up sounds but also owns an emotional support Notes app.
And that’s when it hit me: if I can’t tell (as a graphic designer with an eye for detail) what’s real anymore… who can?
We’re currently in this strange in-between era where people still comment “this is AI” under posts. Sometimes correctly. Sometimes wildly incorrectly. Which says less about AI and more about the collective trust issues we were already carrying into the internet like unresolved baggage.
I thought… how long until we stop caring altogether?
Will there come a point, maybe months from now, maybe sooner, where we just shrug, scroll, and accept that the content we consume may or may not have ever existed? That the dog might not be real, the couple might not be real, the sunset might be a rendering, and honestly… neither might we, depending on who you ask.
We already can’t agree on what reality is. Adding AI to the mix feels less like a plot twist and more like the universe saying, “You sure you wanted clarity?”
And here’s the thing: AI itself isn’t the villain. It’s neutral. It doesn’t wake up plotting chaos. It just reflects human intent: like a very advanced mirror with no moral compass. Use it to fix your grammar, brainstorm ideas, speed up your workflow, design better things, think more clearly? Love that. Iconic. Efficient. Very “working smarter, not harder.”
But humans will always human.
Which means some people will use it to fish for engagement. Some will use it to fake identities. Some will use it in ways that make you wonder if we deserved high-speed internet in the first place. And no amount of tech optimism changes the fact that we’ll need new rules, new ethics, and probably new boundaries around what we trust online.
Or -plot twist- maybe this is how social media slowly loses its grip.
Maybe when we can no longer tell what’s real, the novelty wears off. Maybe we get bored of perfectly generated chaos. Maybe we drift back to words. To books. To long-form thought. To handmade things. To creative labor that takes time, patience, and fingerprints. Maybe authenticity becomes the luxury item.
Because in a world where everything can be generated instantly, effort starts to mean something again.
And maybe that’s not the downfall of creativity, but its reset.
After all, we’ve survived plenty of technological “ends of the world” before. We adapted. We recalibrated. We kept telling stories.
The tools change. Humans stay human. That’s how we survive.
Good Feelings Club 