What is Real, What is Believable?

Photography was once known as the keeper of history. One could look at a photograph and either remember or learn about a time in the past. Photographs were perfect for recording a moment in time. We have the term "photographic evidence" and even the saying "I won't believe it until I see it"; both show how highly a photograph is held in terms of truthfulness.

However, is this statement still valid with the emergence of Photoshop and increased access to a camera? It is extremely easy for anyone to alter an image using today's technology. Of course an amateur photo shopper would not be capable of fooling the general population (If not, this is even more cringe worthy than some of these resulting images). However, someone with genuine skill may be able to convince many people that the image in front of them is reality. We see examples of this everyday, one of the most famous ones involving mythical creatures we all know do not exist, such as Bigfoot, the Lochness monster, or mermaids. I recently encountered a "photograph" or a hyper-realistic mermaid, and if you read the comments section you would be appalled to see how many people honestly believed they were looking at a real mermaid. They wouldn't even trust the sound-minded individuals who would point out all the flaws in the image.

An even scarier point, is when someone can fool everyone about a life realistic image. For example, the slight alteration of an old photograph. This is almost like altering the past, especially if no one knows of the original image. Another example involves not altering, but forging. I have seen staged images where the people in question were dressed to look like they were from the decade they were portraying, and the pictures were filtered to look antique. Examples like these are often captioned with flawed information to make people believe something which is false. In this case it is impossible to point out a mistake in the editing, as there was none. The only way one would know is if there was an inconsistency, for example if the person photographed forgot to take off their smart-watch, or if specific information about the photo-shoot was provided (in which it is usually coincidentally not included).

So who's to say what we can believe? Video? As technology progresses, it will be even easier to manipulate video. Even today, there are people creating vines where they make  object magically appear out of thin air to mess with the viewers perception of space. Special effects in movies are a perfect example of how close we can get a false video to look like a reality, thankfully the public is aware that movies are a form of fiction. However as this sort of technology improves and becomes more accessible to the general population, we will encounter the same issues with video as we did with photography.

Thankfully we currently still have a grasp on our own sense of reality, but with the eventual emergence of virtual reality, is that even safe? Will our present be as easily alterable as the past? Will be able to tell truth from fantasy anymore?