Somewhere out there, a very tired underpaid FBI agent had to write a sentence that would’ve sounded insane just ten years ago. “Criminals may use AI-generated images to fake kidnappings and demand ransom.”
That sentence alone should qualify us for a species-wide timeout. And of course the internet did what the internet does and immediately joked about how this will disrupt the real kidnapping industry.
Real kidnappers. Traditional craftsmen. Men of the trade who now have to go back to mailing toes like it’s a damn artisanal hobby. Generational skills rendered obsolete by machine learning. And somehow, that joke lands because everything now is absurd enough to deserve it.
We really can’t have shit anymore. Not even crimes.
There was a time. Perhaps a simpler, dumber time when scams required effort. Kidnappings required, you know, an actual human being being kidnapped. Logistics. Risk. Physical reality. Now you just open a laptop, type a prompt, generate a crying face, and suddenly someone’s mother is wiring money because the algorithm learned how to mimic panic. That ain’t innovation. It’s the bloody universe mocking us. Technology didn’t just make life easier, it made lies scalable. Industrialized deception. Mass-produced terror. Crime with customer support.
And the replies nailed it, because humor is the only language left when things get this stupid. “3D printed meat is gonna ruin the mailing toes industry.” Of course it will. Why stop at fake photos when you can have synthetic toes? Why risk infection when you can print a foot part in biodegradable plastic? We’re approaching a world where even brutality can be outsourced. Violence as a service. Kidnapping without the inconvenience of touching another human being. Efficiency ruins everything. Even evil.
And then someone said the most honest line in the entire thread, “WE CAN’T HAVE SHIT ANYMORE MAN.” That wasn’t a joke. That was a lament. A prayer. A eulogy for whatever scraps of reality we were still holding onto.
Because it’s not just crime. It’s everything.
You can’t trust photos. You can’t trust voices. You can’t trust videos. You can’t trust news. You can’t trust “I love you.” You can’t trust that the person on the other end of the phone even exists.
Reality used to be the baseline. Now it’s just another aesthetic. Another optional setting you toggle on or off depending on vibes.
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