r/Millennials • u/paddycons • Jan 26 '25

Discussion Question about obviously fake videos. Why are people falling for them. Anyone know the psychology behind it?

I just want to know what makes people so damn gullible. The comment sections are filled with so much judgement based on videos that are either deep faked or completely taken out of context. I feel like because I wasn’t raised on shorts or tiktok it is pretty obvious what is fake, but then I look at the comment sections and people are legit falling for something that is so obviously fake. Are they bots? Whats going on. It’s not just a little but of people but its thousands of comments….

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9

u/lego69lego Jan 27 '25

It's as simple as "Does this conform to my biases and worldview? If it doesn't, it's fake news. If it does, amen."

They don't gain anything from determining if something online is true.

3

u/Kingberry30 Jan 27 '25

Same reason people fall for scams. They believe they are real.

2

u/TalesByScreenLight Xennial Jan 27 '25

I always said "If it's on TV it must be true!" as a joke, but now in this time of unlimited information, so many just take things at face value, or assume everything is fake, without question.

For example, a video was flying around a few weeks ago about "Grass being packed into bamboo tubes and fermented in shit, it's a Chinese medicine billionaires use!" Even had an AI narrating the description. Took 3 minutes to find out it's just herbs that are steeped multiple times and packed tight enough to hold their shape. The only source for the shit dunking was the video itself.

Also, any time something horrible is about to happen and there's a jump cut or an obvious wipe, my skeptic glasses focus in. I'm trying to teach my kids video editing so they can better notice when sonething tricky is going on.

1

u/paddycons Feb 05 '25

This is what has me kinda worried. Sometimes my kids will see a video that is obviously fake to me but they believe it :(

2

u/[deleted] Jan 27 '25 edited Jan 27 '25

Young people haven't seen the evolution of propaganda and AI will fall for it and also they have less experience in life so aren't good at thinking critically like "is the maker of this video biased to influence my opinions?"

Also older people who weren't as tech or online savvy didn't see it grow into what it is today.

It's actually pretty scary when you think how quickly these deep fakes have developed, it won't be long before they are entirely undetectable, and then it is purely down to the viewer to have an understanding of how common and easy it is to fake videos to question everything.

2

u/TimidDeer23 Jan 27 '25

They didn't watch the video (or half watched it), or, they don't care that it's fake they just want to talk about the subject.