The Morning My Brain Broke (Just a Little)

It started with my bulldog, Frankie.

I was scrolling through family photos over morning coffee when I saw her—except she looked like someone had attached a bicycle pump to her and gone wild. Still unmistakably Frankie, with her signature wrinkled face and perpetual look of mild disappointment. But also... inflated? Architecturally impossible?

For three full seconds, my brain stuttered. Had she somehow doubled in size overnight? Was this some bizarre medical condition I'd missed despite my years of training?

Then my daughter walked by, glanced at my screen, and casually mentioned she'd "enhanced" the photo with AI. Everyone else in the family had laughed and moved on.

I couldn't.

I'm a doctor. A scientist. Someone trained to trust evidence, to read reality's vital signs. Yet there I was, genuinely questioning whether a photo of my own dog was real. Not a politician, not a celebrity, not some viral video from halfway around the world. My. Own. Dog.

That's when it hit me: We haven't just entered the age of synthetic media. We're already living in it. And our Stone Age brains are desperately trying to keep up.

The Reality Tax We're All Paying

Every time you pause to wonder if something's real, you're paying what I've come to think of as the Reality Tax—a cognitive toll that adds up throughout the day. It's the mental equivalent of those micro-transactions in mobile games, except instead of coins, we're spending trust.

Think about your last week online. How many times did you:

• See a photo that looked "too perfect"

• Hear about a video that might be fake

• Question whether someone actually said what they supposedly said

• Wonder if that dating profile was even a real person

• Second-guess a voice message that sounded slightly "off"

Each pause, each moment of doubt, is a tiny withdrawal from our collective trust account. And unlike our bank accounts, we don't get monthly statements showing how overdrawn we've become.

From Bulldogs to Billions: The Escalation Is Real

My Frankie moment was harmless—even funny in retrospect. But the same technology that inflated my dog is being weaponized in ways that should terrify us all.

In Hong Kong, an employee recently transferred $25 million after a video call with what appeared to be the company's entire C-suite. Every single person on that call was a deepfake. Twenty-five million dollars, gone, because seeing was believing—until it wasn't.

In Indonesia (where I've spent the last decade working), President Prabowo's face and voice were cloned to invite citizens to invest in fake government programs. The scam worked because it felt personal, authentic, presidential. People lost their savings to a ghost.

In Australia, a pharmacist discovered her image promoting weight-loss drugs she'd never heard of. Her professional reputation, built over years, hijacked in minutes to exploit vulnerable people seeking medical advice.

In the White House, a video showing black garbage bags being removed at night went viral. Real or fake? The administration claimed one thing, critics another. But here's the thing: it almost doesn't matter anymore. When any evidence can be dismissed as synthetic, accountability evaporates.

The Doctor, The Dad, The Human

Let me tell you why this obsession isn't academic for me.

As a doctor, I've had my own image stolen and used to peddle fake cures. Somewhere out there, "I'm" telling desperate people that crystals cure cancer or that vaccines cause their children harm. My medical degree, weaponized against the very people I've sworn to help.

As a father, I watch my kids navigate a world where bullying isn't just verbal anymore, it's visual. Where a single manipulated image can destroy a reputation before homeroom. Where "pics or it didn't happen" has morphed into "pics, but did it really happen?"

As someone who's worked across Indonesia for a decade, I've seen how synthetic media doesn't just confuse, it kills. Fake videos have sparked riots. Manipulated images have destroyed political careers. Entire communities have turned on each other over evidence that never existed.

As a son, I'm watching my parents, sharp, capable people, second-guess things they never used to question. Every family photo becomes suspect. Every phone call from an unknown number could be a voice clone. They're living in a world that's fundamentally different from the one they taught me to navigate.

Your Senses Aren't Broken (The World Is)

Here's what I need you to understand: You're not becoming paranoid. You're adapting.

For 300,000 years, human survival depended on trusting our senses. If you saw a tiger, there was a tiger. If you heard your mother's voice, it was your mother. Our entire neurological architecture is built on this fundamental assumption: perception equals reality.

AI shattered that assumption in about five years.

We're asking our paleolithic brains to function in a world where reality is optional, where evidence is elastic, where even our own memories (captured in photos and videos) can be retroactively edited. No wonder we're exhausted.

The Questions That Keep Me Up

Since my Frankie moment, I've been consumed by questions that feel both urgent and unanswerable:

• When everything can be faked, how do we prove anything is real?

• If we can't trust our senses, what can we trust?

• How do we raise children in a world where "seeing is believing" is obsolete?

• What happens to justice when any evidence can be dismissed as synthetic?

• How do we maintain human connection when we can't be sure the human is real?

I don't have neat answers. I'm suspicious of anyone who claims they do. But I believe the questions themselves are worth pursuing, worth sharing, worth struggling with together.