This Is How Reality Ends: Not With a Bang, But a Bunny on a Trampoline

About this episode

The episode explores the blurred line between real and fake online content, focusing on AI-generated media and its implications for trust and identity.

Are we absolutely sure that what we’re seeing is even real? In this episode, we dig into the increasingly blurry line between real and fake online—from AI-generated bunny videos to deepfakes of ourselves, and the billion-dollar platforms that are encouraging all of it. We explore how tech companies like Meta and OpenAI are normalizing synthetic content at scale and what that means for trust, identity, and the future of human connection. This isn’t a “look what AI can do” episode. It’s a conversation about what it’s already doing—to our feeds, our friendships, and our sense of reality. Along the way, we talk about: 🐰 Why that bunny-on-a-trampoline video might be the end of the internet 🎭 How deepfakes are shifting from creepy to commonplace 📉 The death of real content in algorithm-driven feeds 🔓 The risks of uploading your face and voice to AI tools 🚫 Why “don’t share it if it feels weird” might be your best defense 🧠 What brain science says about why we fall for fakes—and how to fight it 👀 How to protect yourself (and your kids) in an era of hyperreal lies 🔧 What the tech bros aren’t telling us about the future they’re building

People in this episode

Hosts: Jenny Swan, Greg Swan

Topics covered

• AI-generated content
• deepfakes
• trust and identity
• synthetic media
• human connection
• online reality

Keywords

• bunny on a trampoline
• deepfakes
• synthetic content
• algorithm-driven feeds
• hyperreal lies
• brain science
• AI tools

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Meta, OpenAI

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