Hoaxes

 

In class, we discussed hoaxes and the many reasons of motivation behind them. Our discussion reminded me of a recent time when I hoaxed a friend, Rocco, for fun. When recently in Las Vegas, my friends hired a bodyguard, Mark, to come to different events with us. Rocco befriended Mark, who inspired him to sign up for jiu-jitsu classes. After returning to Texas, in good fun, my friend Anna Clay created a fake burner phone number and sent a text to Rocco pretending to be Mark. Rocco, being gullible, fell for the hoax and was sad when he found out his new friend Mark actually wasn’t checking in on the jiu-jitsu training. With this recent experience, it reminded me that hoaxes sometimes are easier to fall for when they cause the hoaxee to believe something they already wanted to believe. This shows confirmation bias and makes people more likely to fall into the trap.

I enjoyed our discussion of hoaxes and found it to be transferable across multiple historical events, from the Cardiff Giant back in the 1800s to today’s daily exposure to hoaxes through AI videos. I recently shared a funny video of a dog with a friend, only to be informed that the video was made from AI, which was quite troubling to me and now causes me to be on higher alert with any media that I consume. As technology continues to progress, I do not doubt that AI will only grow stronger and, therefore, society will grow more skeptical.

Comments

  1. williams.dan76November 4, 2025 at 9:43 AM

    Great response to hoaxes, thanks. Loved the prank text. I thinking joking this way can be fun if it's not taken too far. There's a ton of YouTube videos about couples pranking each other, and some are definitely on the cruel side. I guess the crueler the prank, putting glue in someone's shampoo, the more hits and likes they get. Your second paragraph raises the specter of AI frauds, which can be undetectable. Right now, I tend to distrust anything and everything.

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