9/10
I loved how intially confused I was! Hey, sue me.
16 June 2023
I mean, I read "deep fake" in the title, but I was initially convinced that Idris et al had conspired to meta-spoof the overrated "artificial intelligence" scare, and were participating in a sly, ironic TV coup with live actors. I was ecstatic! I mean, the actual real actors/shills could have actually done this show and it would have rocked as self-effacing irony!

But then I saw Greta and realized...wait, this cannot be...there is no conceivable universe in which Greta could be either funny or informal, and thus I transitioned from hysterical to apoplectic, as I began to accept that these are actually, really, true deep fakes, if indeed they are (the only convincing evidence for this is that neither Idris, nor Greta appear in the IMDB creds).

As I have no actual truck with shills, radicals and corporate-sponsored professional alarmists of any stripe, I actually thought, for a brief moment, that Greta was capable of cordiality, earthiness, and mirth! It was a bit deflating to realize that none of the portrayed actors were capable of engineering this sort of TV coup for themselves. Omg, how crazy is that--this is how good the show is!

But, I have to take a deep breath, because this show is going to be historically important and future retrospectives and debates are going to talk about it. For good or evil (and I think good, in this case) this is a thing now. We either adapt to it or we get irrelevant. Rail against it all you like, cry out for censorship and regulation (if you're shallow and short-sighted) but here we are and that will not work. Adapt your mind, help adapt the minds of others around you, and perhaps we will regain the ability to interpret the veracity of the message entirely without reference to the messenger. Perhaps the utterly failed expert/authority culture will give way to a renaissance of actual critical thought. Wouldn't that be something different!

Maybe "A. I." will actually end up saving us, turning us on to the real, actual deep fake that is the present mainstream media reality. Maybe a humorous, forward-leaning embrace of deep faking is the only honest, humanist, reality-embracing tactic that can trump so called "A. I.". I'm so down with this. I've seldom seen more honest performances from the so-called "faked" subjects of this program.
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