How online distrust is rewriting reality
From six fingers to body size twice, AI is fueling a new era where distrust spreads faster than facts, writes Tom Tanuki.
When I heard Benjamin Netanyahu’s six fingers, I thought of Tom Hanks.
I’m talking about a short episode video What is even more saddening in this incident, where genocidal Netanyahu is trying to prove to the public that he is still alive and not yet alive, is that he burns in hell. The video was a response to online wildfire rumors that either he or his son Yair Netanyahu had been killed in a targeted Iranian drone strike.
The rumor mill quickly shifted to: to separate video. Didn’t Netanyahu have six fingers for a moment? Didn’t he tilt his coffee cup so much that it spilled, but physics be damned, not a single drop fell? Didn’t he take a big sip from that cup to keep it completely full?
Much of the gossip, led by influencers, took the form of wondering whether the Netanyahu video was created by artificial intelligence. A brief demonstration of six fingers is a perfect example of the current-generation AI-like feature. It’s a perfectly reasonable suspicion that any self-aware internet user is compelled to feel something about all the information or media he sees online. (These are probably all sketchy, made and distributed by bots for a while.) dead internet.)
But the other doubt I see in the comment sections is that this is a body double Netanyahu. This is what made me think of Tom Hanks. This reminds me of Jim Carrey:
I was surprised by the ubiquity of recent debates about whether Carrey, who was in Paris to receive his lifetime achievement award at the Cesar Awards, is worthy of this award. changed his face looked a little different, something that had never happened to anyone in Hollywood before.
A very normal colleague at work mentioned this. Half-decent, boring people I’ve known my whole life were talking about this. For a while, your mom, your accountant, and your dog actually thought Pet Detective Ace Ventura had been replaced by a stunt double for ‘exposing the pedophile elite.’
In 2018, you knew where you stood on these body double conspiracies. You stood aside. And your mother didn’t know anything about it unless you told her and watched her eyes sparkle.
This is the first time I’ve encountered the body double conspiracy. Tom Hanksand it was in this context: QAnonAdrenochrome is the worst written of the late 2010s spy fantasies about Satanic elites and kidnapped children.
Back then, the QAnon celebrity plots were different: Liberal celebrities were still part of an elite Cabal secretly punished by Trump and his allies for their crimes against children, rather than the outlier Hollywood rebels who defied said elites and were killed just for the sake of Carrey. (The dynamics are reversed because, in 2026, celebrities appear to be a less united progressive front. And post-Epstein Files Donald Trump himself looks like a card-carrying Cabal member.)
The theory at the time was that the real Hanks was secretly court-martialed, tried, and executed for being a Satanic pedophile. The Cabal had attempted to conceal this fact by sending a stunt double to replace Hanks.
Back when these ideas existed on the far political frontiers of the internet, one still felt a little brave in managing to become familiar with them. I’ve had great fun tackling this topic over a period of time, creating an Australian perspective on the vast conspiracy universe of QAnon and the highly online ‘digital soldiers’. two part documentary on YouTube.
I thought deeply about the psychology of conspiracy theories. I have argued that conspirators do not necessarily work to expose real-world power conspiracies, but often tap into latent anxieties created by actual abuses of power.
The Australian, for example, unwittingly helped bring to life Fiona Barnett and her elite Satanic pedophile. conspiracy theories At a time of collective dismay at the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse in Australian institutions in 2014.
Similarly, QAnon theories of the late 2010s were dealt a blow by Julie K Brown’s 2018 study. investigation To Jeffrey Epstein. QAnon hasn’t even remotely spawned such a thing or engaged in anything more than a lurid fantasy. But he gained power from his apparent proximity to real monsters like Epstein.
QAnon supporters were famous isolated By exploiting their feelings of powerlessness and paranoia,digital soldiers‘For political purposes. These days, I wonder if the QAnon ‘digital soldier’ is a test case for the enthusiastic, motivated public of all stripes convinced that everyone is a body double, guided here and there by an army of hyper-partisan influencers who flood the internet from all political angles. Carrey. Hanks. Netanyahu.
The Pedophile President has flooded the internet with millions of documents that expose thousands of random names of celebrities, politicians and victims to the chaotic scrutiny of these masses in the form of the ‘Epstein Files’.
Julie K Brown, whose name we will probably never know, said the following about these ‘Files’: New Yorker:
“I wish I could say it was satisfying to finally see some truth in this, but the way this issue is currently being handled by the Administration is very chaotic and disorganized. […] So I think in some ways it raises more questions and the public becomes more distrustful. This was supposed to be an act of transparency. And frankly, I don’t see it that way.”
The decision (made under apparently extreme internal pressures) appears to be a gamble that paid off. Millions of documents are now randomly distributed to the public by their favorite partisan influencer, directing them to the brigade of whoever their chosen political opponents are. They all look like digital soldiers to me.
Over the past few months, I have heard the phrase very frequently that the Epstein Files should ‘prove’ that QAnon was ‘right from start to finish.’ This tells me these people know what QAnon is about or what Epstein actually did. However, it is a fact that in an environment of increasing insecurity, conspiracies are increasing more than ever.
What hidden concerns does Netanyahu’s video tap into and is instantly considered a body double or AI video? Never mind that any video can now be effective AI-generated disinformation, and most of the time it is; It is now impossible to trust our information flow even at the best of times. The stupidity of artificial intelligence has made us more distrustful, more paranoid, and more conspiratorial.
Leave this aside. Let’s accept that Netanyahu is a head of state who has led a decades-long campaign of colonization, ethnic cleansing, and displacement of indigenous people that has now culminated in several years of public genocide. Genocide is supported and financed by all our heads of state in the West.
Most of us believe he should have been arrested by now during one of his foreign trips, tried and executed as a war criminal. It had to be stopped by its Western financiers.
We saw all this destruction happen and we were unable to stop it for our masses and our millions. Now we see him bragging on social media that he is not dead. Our governments also support him.
The deep anxieties and fundamental distrust that this barbaric state of affairs fueled among the global working class were clearly always going to form the mainstream of widespread conspiracism. It’s hard not to act like a digital soldier in this lawless world as we watch the last remaining rules of international law being thrown aside.
After all, it is not unreasonable to wish Benjamin Netanyahu dead. In fact, it is a moral obligation to do so. I think there are very few people in the world who deserve this more.
Tom Tanuki is an IA columnist, author, satirist and anti-fascist activist whose weekly videos commenting on Australia’s political wing are published on: YouTube. You can follow him on Twitter/X @tom_tanuki.
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