Herded By Sheepfakes
In postreality, even the deepfakes are phony
A barrage of alleged “deepfakes” exploded on social media over the weekend. They then spread like mind viruses among lab rats in a crowded cage.
To take one example, millions have now scrutinized a weird-looking rally photo from last Wednesday. The image (below) shows Kamala Harris and Tim Walz emerge from a jet with no tail number. We see the Democratic candidates being greeted by an eerily lit crowd on a Detroit tarmac. There appear to be random images on each person’s smartphone, naturally interpreted as the result of flawed AI.
“These crowds are all fake!” roared the real people at home, egged on by influencers, all gripping their smartphones like anchors in a stormy sea of digital chicanery. If you examine this particular tarmac photo—originally posted by the twerpy Dem influencer Harry Sisson and relentlessly questioned by right-wing TikTok personality “The Older Millennial”—it definitely looks doctored. Even my friends in AI agree on that.
But despite the anomalous appearance, the crowd on the tarmac is real. One hundred percent real.
By the way, so are the authorities poised to crack down on “misinformation” and “disinformation” online. And they’re champing at the bit to use popular delusions and the madness of crowds to justify total information control. Mark my words—we’re being primed for a “reality czar” or something like it.
You have to question everything, of course, but that includes questioning the “skeptics.”
“If these ‘people’ are real,” some rightly asked, “where are all the videos posted online?” As it turns out, there are countless videos and photos of the Harris-Walz rally all over the internet, showing the same crowds as the supposedly faked photo. Social media is so algorithmically segregated, though, conservatives simply don’t see them in their feeds.
“Where is the tail number?” people asked. It’s a sensible question. However, if you look at the picture of vice presidential candidate JD Vance above, you can see the jet behind him also has no tail number. As it turns out, this has become a common security measure. It’s as simple as that.
The Democrat talking points may be as fake as a zero-calorie wedding cake for an online throuple, but the crowds gathering to support the Harris-Walz ticket are real. And they are registered voters. That’s a harsh reality that many are so unwilling to face, they’ve convinced themselves it’s all just AI-generated fakes.
People have always believed whatever they liked, but these days, there are justifiable reasons for sliding into the trance of solipsism.
Deepfakes are bogus videos, images, and audio that have been generated by AI. As of this year, the best are nearly impossible to detect with the naked eye. They’re easier to make than an improvised explosive device. If you don’t watch your step, they’re liable to blow your brains out.
Sheepfakes are real photos or videos of real people—even if they’re slightly altered—that hyper-skeptical influencers call “fake,” leading the bleating herd over a cliff into an abyss of zero credibility. Taken together, actual deepfakes and phony sheepfakes create a toxic punch of postreality. No one knows what to believe, so they just believe whatever they want.
Lies are as ancient as forbidden fruit and the serpent who whispers, “Of course I love you, baby. I’ll call you in the morning.” Applying that old school deception to modern media, propaganda has been deployed for centuries—and it still works like a charm. Selective editing, or “cheapfakes,” are plenty effective at smearing a person or distorting their message. Recall the “fine people” hoax and the “surveillance under skin” hoax, which I compared and contrasted in my book.
The coming nightmare is a world where deepfakes fool most of the people most of the time. Generative AI has reached a level of sophistication that allows people to fabricate alternate realities with a few keystrokes. The tech has arrived. But so far, we haven’t seen the dam break. Not yet.
For now, we’re stuck in this liminal zone where the mere threat of deepfakes has warped people’s perception of reality. Hyper-skeptics are like tense soldiers scanning the horizon. Everywhere, they see enemy faces in the clouds. Each time they freak out over nothing, we get sheepfakes about mask-wearing clones or a computer-generated Biden—a.k.a., CGI Joe—or a “staged” assassination attempt on Trump. And the herds run straight for the cliff.
On Saturday, the above photo was posted by an obvious parody account called “Dr. Literaleigh A. Pheline” with a cat for a profile pic. The AI-generated image shows an arena packed with sloppily replicated faces, many of them warped in typical AI fashion, their eyes wonked out as if they’d all been spawned by kissing cousins.
“The Harris/Walz rally last night had an electricity that I’ve never seen before,” the caption read. “The right hates this.”
As if programmed to do so, right-wing influencers blasted this ham-fisted deepfake to their millions of followers, citing it as evidence the Harris/Walz crowds were just an AI-generated hoax. The influencers got pranked hard. The masses got sheepfaked. Upon realizing the trap they’d fallen into, most deleted their outraged posts. But the “deepfake” narrative rolled on.
By then, another photo from the Detroit tarmac had attracted a swarm of online sleuths. Below we see a massive crowd gathered around the Kamala/Walz jet, but a close look at the reflection on the engine cowling seems to reveal no crowd whatsoever. It appears to be an empty tarmac. Yet again, the herd was led over the cliff’s edge by another sheepfake.
As I pointed out at the time, the effect is a combination of the camera lens distorting the crowd’s distance plus the cowling’s convex reflective surface. Because of that curvature, the reflection shrinks the crowd—which is at eye level—and stretches out the tarmac below. This is easily confirmed by live PBS footage, which, on close examination, shows the same reflective illusion.
Harris may draw crowds of total phonies, but they are flesh-and-blood phonies with voter registration cards.
Not that my counter-skepticism mattered much. Out on the seas of social media, you get nowhere by sailing against the prevailing winds—otherwise known as human nature. People believe what they want.
Yesterday, Trump posted the zoomed-in cowling image paired with the original “deepfake” tarmac photo on Truth Social. His caption reads: “Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.’d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers. BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!” The Don’s overly aggressive advisers led him toward a memetic land mine, which he duly stepped on.
Today, in an ominous if strategically shrewd move, Trump returned to X—the “free speech” platform. If the course isn’t corrected, his deal with the digital devil will be sealed.
About one month ago—a few hours before the assassination attempt on Trump, which some hyper-skeptics alleged was “staged”—Musk wrote: “Computers will control the future … They already do.”
Standing on the edge of postreality, it’s hard to argue with him.
As artificial intelligence gets better and better, any attempt to debunk a deepfake—or to clarify a sheepfake—will be an uphill battle on an exponential curve. The tired New Age dictum that “your perception is reality” will actually come true as people paint the inside of their skulls with whatever world suits them.
While these digital delusions continue to spread, the stage is set for authorities to step in and sort out what is “real” from what is “fake”—with no consent required. Recall that back in 2021, at the height of Covid propaganda, the New York Times urged the Biden administration to appoint a “reality czar” to stamp out unapproved information.
Bear in mind that the stated purpose of Sam Altman’s WorldID—the evil orb that links one’s biometric patterns to a blockchain-based digital identity—is to verify one’s personhood on an internet flooded with the AI bots and deepfakes that Altman helped create.
Consider that as I type these words, the UK government is arresting people for social media posts alleged to spread “racial hate” and “disinformation.”
As far as political mobilization goes, AI-generated deepfakes and bone-headed sheepfakes might pay off in the short-term, just like the old school lies and propaganda that came before them. You can rile the herd and steer them any direction you want. Most sheep will thank you for it.
In the long-term, though, this memetic contagion will necessitate a cure. No matter how idiotic these popular delusions are right now, the authoritarian cure will be far worse than the disease. Any skull that's been scrawled with algorithmic nonsense—or illegal truths—will be repainted with official memes.
ICYMI
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Glad you addressed this.
The INTERNET is the biggest Psyop on the PLANET!
If you know this before going into the NET it's easier to CYPHER!
Thanks Joebot.
The ultimate irony. There's the problem, then the problem of the problem not working. Aka solution.
Enough to make your head spin, your knees crumple, and the gaslighting reflex extinguish all hope. Alas, never cave, mule kick a bushel basket hiding the light to carve a spark via flint/stone into a pile of brainless straw scarecrows. Prepare s'mores and await fellow bonfire friends like the proverbial Betty and Barney/Fred and Wilma template. Complete with Gazoo and sabretooth tiger mindset. Glorious.