Nothing is Real Anymore

Nothing is Real Anymore: Rebuilding Trust in an Age of Suspicion

Nothing feels real anymore.

Between AI deepfakes, manipulated headlines and algorithmic outrage, we’ve reached a point where truth feels negotiable. Even the people we talk to often sound like they are repeating something they heard online.

This newly constant question - what’s real and what isn’t? - has swiftly become exhausting.

And when we can’t easily find truth, we default to suspicion.

The Outsourcing of Trust

Trust used to be the invisible contract holding society together. We assumed most people meant well, that checks and balances would eventually catch bad actors, and that life would go on.

But that belief has eroded.

The institutions once built on credibility - government, media, business and even academia - spent decades slowly dissolving it. Scandal, polarization and profit-driven storytelling have created a fog where facts and fiction compete for the same, limited attention span.

And so we have outsourced our trust.

We let algorithms, influencers and AI decide what’s credible. We’ve traded critical thinking for convenience, accepting “the doom scroll” as news feed, the comment section as our trust anchor. The more we rely on those systems, the more suspicious we become.

Suspicion is Stress

Suspicion isn’t just mental; it’s biological. It’s our nervous system saying, “something feels off.”

In moderation, that instinct keeps us safe. But as a lifestyle, it corrodes us. Suspicion fragments our thinking, isolates us from others and convinces us to fill the gaps with fear or conspiracy. Our imagination makes connections that aren’t there.

Suspicion helped our ancestors survive. Today, it makes it harder to live.

The Laziness of Knowing

Information is everywhere. Understanding is rare.

We mistake awareness for insight. We confuse headlines for comprehension. We quote “research” without context and call it expertise.

The result is what I call mental passivity; we know a lot but think very little. And when we stop thinking critically, we stop trusting our own judgment.

When you don’t trust yourself, you can’t trust anyone else.

That’s the loop we are stuck in: doubt, outrage, reaction, repeat.

The Humanity Antidote

Not to sound trite - but the fix isn’t more data. It’s more humanity.

We don’t rebuild trust with better algorithms. We rebuild it through proximity - real conversations, real presence, real people.

When you sit across from someone and truly listen, you notice the pause before they speak, the shift in their posture, the sincerity behind a word. Those moments remind us that communication is more than content - it’s context. And it’s shared.

We can’t build trust in isolation. We need micro-interactions that challenge our assumptions and expose us to nuance - the very things that social media flattens.

This context and nuance drives the virtue that can help us repair our cultural fracture: humility. True humility isn’t weakness - it’s curiosity without arrogance. It’s the willingness to say, “I don’t know that, but I’d like to understand.” It’s not about telling people why they are wrong - it’s asking why they believe what they do.

Real humanity, and real humility, allow dialogue to replace division.

Think for Yourself

We can’t wait for better systems or smarter filters. The responsibility sits with each of us. The danger isn’t necessarily misinformation - it’s our willingness to let someone else think for us. AI isn’t the enemy, but passivity is.

Ask yourself:

Who do I actually trust - and why?

Do I challenge the sources I rely on?

Am I thinking critically, or just consuming passively?

Trust doesn’t return through fact-checks or laws. It returns when we start living authentically, engaging locally and owning our thoughts.

Not everything we hear or read will ever be real again. But we can be.

That’s the work.