Too many ‘candid’ social media videos are obviously, agonisingly fake. So why are viewers laughing? | Rebecca Shaw

With advances in technology including AI and ChatGPT, and increasingly realistic fake images everywhere, media literacy is diving towards an all-time low. There are many areas where a lack of critical thinking has had and will have devastating effects on society. I’m here to talk about something that is not as serious but that does have one daily impact – annoying me.

It happens when I’m scrolling TikTok, or X, or Instagram (or one of the many other apps I use to make sure my brain is never alone with itself), and the algorithm serves me up a video it thinks I’ll like. It will be a video that lots of other people have watched, liked and commented on with a series of crying laughing emojis, or “LMFAO” or “omg so funny”. So with this forward sizzle, I click, excited and open-hearted, ready to laugh.

All too often, everything comes crashing down immediately. The problem with the video isn’t that I don’t find it funny. That’s bound to happen every so often and I can deal with it, that’s just other people’s (wrong) sense of humour. What I can’t handle is seeing a “candid” video sending audiences into ecstasies of amazement and appreciation when it is clearly, painfully, unbelievably fake.

There are many varieties of fake and, in my opinion, they are all easy to spot if you have been out into the world. There’s fake as in “my family was randomly recording our convo and our brother said something hilarious” and everyone involved is clearly acting (including the man of 70+ they are forcing to appear in content, a plea for help in his eyes).

There’s fake as in pranks that a wife pulls on a husband and they’re all entirely staged, which I can tell because I have seen how humans interact and respond to stimuli. There are posts of crazy text conversations, written in a way no real human has ever spoken.

There are endless examples where, within seconds, it’s obvious to me that what I’m watching is a fake situation being badly sold as real.

This is not like pro wrestling, where the performers put in the effort and it’s entertaining even if it’s scripted. Most of the time when you realise one of these setups is fake it immediately becomes uninteresting, because it relies on a semblance of spontaneity to be at all remarkable.

It’s annoying because there are many people online who are actually funny, there are heaps of conversations or hilarious scenarios filmed that are spontaneous and real, and you (I) can tell too. There are also people trying to deliberately make comedy, make sketches, put time and effort into a craft – and, irritatingly, some viewers think that these clips are real, too.

I’m not just talking about falling for a fake video every so often – sometimes the acting is good, sometimes copies are perfect. I take issue with people opening videos, consuming them without a thought, and not taking a moment, seemingly not one second, to cast a critical eye. To wonder, “Hey, does this scenario seem realistic and within the laws of physics?” or, “Hmm, why are these people talking as if The Sims started speaking English?”

I know this doesn’t seem important. But I worry – if you aren’t taking a moment to have a think about the realities of a silly video, yet still taking time to comment LOL on it earnestly, are you going to cast a critical eye over realistic AI-produced content or fake news stories?

It’s extra annoying for someone who works in comedy. Our industry is in a vulnerable position, there are few comedy films made, the TV industry is not thriving and The Bear keeps winning all the comedy awards – even though Jeremy Allen White has not said one funny thing in that show.

It’s already difficult to deal with being served up the popular video content of bad comics, or the sketches where men put a tea towel on their head to pretend to be their wife, or Joe Rogan, or hot unfunny guys with video podcasts. Or not-hot unfunny guys with video podcasts, who still somehow seem to thrive.

I’m baffled a lot of the time about what people find funny, as I’m sure some people are baffled by what I find funny. But that is what it is. What I can’t hack is people making lazy content seem interesting by calling it authentic, and audiences validating that with unconsidered and unjustified amazement.

I used to try to have a laissez-faire attitude to this sort of thing, a “let people enjoy things” mentality, but no longer. I’ve had enough. I’m sick of people skipping the part where you work hard on your comedy to make people connect with it and laugh, then getting the desserts anyway.

I implore everyone to take a few moments to think about what you’re consuming. This should be applied more generally in your life, not just to silly videos – but please start there, for me.

• Rebecca Shaw is a writer based in Sydney

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