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To this day, I remember an older sister convincing me that people lived inside the moon. Of course, this was an earlier age of rocketry, moonwalks, posters on the bedroom wall and a huge arsenal of astronaut toys in my toybox. It was nearly 30 years earlier that Orson Welles had incited a panic by convincing his CBS Mercury Theatre radio audience that a Martian invasion was in progress. Have times changed 87 years since that infamous War of the Worlds live broadcast on October 30, 1938, regarding our level of gullibility in today’s high-tech and socially active existence? Not much.  

Anyone spending more than 30 seconds on Facebook, Instagram or TikTok or any of the other social media platforms will undoubtedly encounter a social sea of amazing videos and photos.  We tend to watch, rewatch and of course, share these with our friends, families and strangers. I often find myself sharing funny videos and photos that are simply mindless nonsense and cater to an audience looking for a quick laugh or even an argument from time to time. Many of the newsy videos appear to be coming from credible, trustworthy sources like broadcast news, for example. However, there are a lot of homegrown and foreign players editing the audio and video to cause flat-out deception for no reason other than to stir panic, create outrage and sow fear amongst the social users. And yes, much of these manipulated videos continue to be shared and reshared courtesy of the social network platforms that have zero monitoring and fact checking. Yes, gullibility is alive and well today, just as it was when the great Martian invasion took place in 1938.

It is often difficult for me and my journalist friends to be silent when we hear or see news items of high value being manipulated or created by artificial intelligence to deceive the public.  Sometimes only one word is changed in a shared news video that completely overrides the truth in the entire story. Political videos are among the most deceitful brands of truth disruption.  Everyday I see “questionable” videos that claim to be authentic only to dig a little further on the internet and find out the videos are false, made up, faked and wrong. This is not a left versus right problem, it’s everyone’s problem.  

If a person can use Facebook or other social media, then he or she is also fully capable of using Google to verify the authenticity of a story – video or photo included – that pops up in their social media feed before sharing it with hundreds of people. He should take this extra step, especially if the story sounds truly outrageous. If he cares nothing about the truth and continues embracing unverified national news from Facebook, he should have a survival “go-bag” ready once word gets out the Martians have arrived just outside the city limits.