In late 2025, a photo of a drunk raccoon charmed the internet. Passed out next to a toilet in the bathroom of a liquor store, the creature was sleeping off the, ahem, cocktail he drank. He broke into bottles containing vodka, rum, moonshine, eggnog, and even some peanut butter whiskey. Were you skeptical when you first saw this story? It turned out to be true, but this is just the kind of artificial intelligence (AI)-fueled hoax that we encounter every day.
Have you found yourself becoming more and more cynical when confronted with information? The drunk raccoon story doesn’t really matter to our lives, but there are so many news topics that do—vaccine efficacy, election integrity, climate change.
The Backlash Effect: When Skepticism Goes Too Far
With an overwhelming flood of information, it can be hard to separate fact from fiction, opening the door for dangerous mis- and disinformation. As we wrote about a few years ago, a number of interventions have been introduced aimed at “inoculating us” against false news, including two online games, Bad News and Go Viral!. Both are designed to prompt us to think critically by exposing us to misinformation techniques. Early research…
