Dominic's ENGL 170 Blog

The Cost of Giving Up

February 27, 2026

There’s a question that keeps coming up in the comments of every "AI is coming" article: Does it actually matter? If I can’t tell that a video is fake, but it entertains me, or it makes a point I agree with, does the "reality" of it even matter anymore? It’s a tempting shrug. We’re already living in a world of filtered photos and scripted reality TV.

But as we move deeper into 2026, we’re realizing that the "death of reality" isn't a victimless crime. As Elruma Dixon notes in Policy Options, "the line between reality and simulation is blurring," and that blurriness has a high price tag. When the barrier between "is" and "seems" finally dissolves, we enter a state of Epistemic Nihilism. We don't necessarily believe the lies; we just don't have the energy to find the truth. We start treating all information like background noise.

This "truth fatigue" is the ultimate win for anyone who wants to do something bad in the dark. It creates what the Stimson Center calls the Liar’s Dividend. In a world where deepfakes are everywhere, a real villain doesn't need to prove they are innocent; they just need to prove that "proof" itself is dead. We’re already seeing this play out in the courts. In a 2023 wrongful death lawsuit, Tesla's legal team argued that recorded statements made by Elon Musk shouldn't be admitted because "he, like many public figures, is the subject of many 'deepfake' videos."

As the University of Baltimore Law Review points out, this creates a "Deepfake Defense" where parties "exploit uncertainty by claiming that damaging but genuine evidence is 'AI-generated'." If any recording can be dismissed as a deepfake, then no one is ever responsible for what they say.

But the damage goes deeper than just politics or law. It’s psychological. Human relationships are built on "shared reality." If we can't agree on what happened five minutes ago because we’re both looking at different, algorithmically-tuned versions of "the truth," how do we ever build a community? We’re moving toward a Vibocracy. In a Vibocracy, we don't look for facts; we look for "vibes." If a video makes us feel righteous anger, we share it. If it makes our "side" look bad, we label it a deepfake. The objective reality becomes irrelevant; all that matters is the emotional payload.

As Jonas argued in The Slot-Machine Symphony, the speed of digital production has outpaced our ability to actually live with the art—and now, it's outpacing our ability to live with the truth.

This brings us back to that Gen Alpha literacy gap. If the next generation grows up in this "Vibocracy," they won't just be bad at spotting fakes—they’ll think the very concept of "real" is an outdated obsession. As Dixon warns, "AI risks becoming a driver of inequality" where only those with the resources to verify information can navigate the world safely.

So, does it matter if you can’t tell if something is real? Yes. Because "real" is the only thing that keeps us tethered to each other. When we stop being able to tell the difference, we don't just lose the truth; we lose the ability to be held accountable. We become a collection of individuals living in private, "imagined" universes, shouting at each other through the mist. The "glitch" wasn't just a technical error; it was a safety feature. It was the machine's way of telling us, "Don't get too comfortable." Now that the glitches are fading, we have to be our own glitches. We have to be the ones who refuse to move into the "Vibocracy."

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