Can You Spot It?

Published August 20, 2025

Let’s talk about some high-tech trickery that’s sneaking into our lives. There are many vectors we could take on this annoying, real problem. I prefer taking a light-hearted approach to ease into this. It’s sneaky, like a coyote in the night.

Back in 2023, a video of coyotes bouncing on a backyard trampoline went viral. It was caught on a homeowner’s camera, and folks online were chuckling. It was the real deal, and cute, like so many other things entering our lives via the Internet. It was so cute, it sparked a wave of manufactured copycat videos—known as deepfakes—crafted with new-fangled computer wizardry to look just as convincing as the original, but cuter. If you haven’t seen the fake videos of racoons, bears, foxes, or other animals of trampolines, it should take about “ten seconds” to find them on YouTube. Caution: Those ten seconds could spawn hours in Internet-time.

But here’s the thing. Some videos you find are legitimate. So many aren’t. For example, there’s a video from 2008 of foxes doing the same. The quality of that video and the fact that AI-deepfakes were not widely possible yet point to that video being authentic. And it is not hard to find a video like this that is clearly fake, albeit entertaining. And then there are those where we’re not sure.

Some folks brag they can “always tell” what’s real. And yet, I’m not so sure that claim will last very long with the way technology is developing. Yes. There are tail-tail signs you can train yourself to spot – currently. But, even in this newspaper, you can spend way too much time pouring over the two cartoon images that are virtually identical looking for the five differences. They can be really subtle. Right? The problem is that we don’t want to have to play that game every time we read a news article, see a photo, or watch a video clip. And yet, that’s already necessary.

The problem is that so many people were never told they are in this game. If they see it, it’s real! This topic tends to track with generational differences. “The kids” spot these fakes faster than the older crowd. I won’t attempt to explain why, but the actual wisdom older folk should be able to lay claim to is all too often undermined by the complete gullibility when it comes to these fake videos. And that is a shame.

My point here is that this may be a bigger problem than you realize. However, everyone is going to figure this out eventually. My hope is to speed up the process where less people – especially the well-informed subscribers of the Clifton Record Tribune – will not fall for such shenanigans as often. When it comes to cute animal videos, who cares? When it comes to our news, beliefs, politics, and core societal values, it is not so cute.

Someone’s joke can end up not being so funny. Jokes are just part of the spectrum. We also know about full-blown malicious intent to mislead and confuse. I’m exhausted to hear people scream disinformation and misinformation as they are doing it themselves. Our sentiment for news is shaky. And I don’t believe anyone online since the late 1990’s could say they have never fallen for a scam; even the sharpest among us can get duped. Still, some will proclaim “I’d know a deepfake a mile away!” Overconfidence is a trap.

Most of the skills we’ve already started learning from email scams still apply. Where did this actually originate? Is this trying to get me to do something? Does this make sense? Does this media seem almost like it’s crafted to absolutely reinforce something I think or want? If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.

Again, learn to use AI-tools to do some background research on things to determine what is real or fake. For this topic, old school google searches really don’t hold up against AI-queries. Ask your favorite AI chat bot “Please tell me about videos of animals on trampolines and how best to tell which are real and how to spot fakes. Please give examples and links.” This style of question should be what you do about news articles, memes, ads that look like news reports, and, of course, YouTube and TikTok videos. While these answers will also lead you astray from time to time, you will generally strengthen your senses for spotting fakes.

Spotting fakes is a great skill. It’s great to have that friend who is an expert regarding something important in our lives, like spotting “lemon” cars or even bad foundations of a home you are looking to buy. Ultimately, it is up to each of us to not get duped by the jokesters or con artists.

Let’s keep our guard up and help one another. Learn how to kindly point out to our friends and family when they are sharing something that is clearly not true. If it’s a joke and primarily for fun, hopefully that will be apparent to everyone else that is the case. But once we get into other meaty topics, we could all benefit if we can privately point out when someone’s passing on fake news.

For the older crowd, a stereotype has emerged regarding the things you share. That stereotype has accelerated with high-quality deep-fake videos. Note to self: The rest of the family probably does not want to see every single “cute” thing I find online. And they really don’t want to see some politically charged “proof” that you have been right from the start about your favorite villain.

Truth doesn’t suffer from all of this. Truth-seekers do. Maybe that is obvious. There’s no way around this challenge. Maybe we’ll emerge more aware of what healthy scepticism looks like. Paying attention and using our brains to process whatever comes our way should have always been our goal. Right?

 

And beyond this, let’s see what’s next!

J Matt Wallace