"Growing up, it used to be pics or it didn't happen" - Luke

[poochyena]

Why do tech bros think that before modern tech, fake videos/hoaxes didn't exist?

 

[Avocado Diaboli]

Who said they didn't exist? Forgeries are as old as humanity. But the effort and skill required to manufacture forgeries has been going down dramatically over time. That means any layperson can now create them with minimal skill or effort. The "pics or didn't happen" phrase is pretty much reserved for informal and low-stakes scenarios anyway, a dipshit acquaintance making up some bullshit story where the phrase got used to call a bluff. You really have to reach hard to make this equivalent to a claim that somebody believes forgeries didn't exist prior to modern tech existing.

[poochyena]

57 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

The "pics or didn't happen" phrase is pretty much reserved for informal and low-stakes scenarios anyway, a dipshit acquaintance making up some bullshit story where the phrase got used to call a bluff.

What is the implication then, if not to suggest pics would prove the story to be true?

[Thaldor]

Let's summarize the history to that the phrase started in Something Awful and 4Chan and it was pretty much used against idiots claiming shit that anyone with a nostrils would smell to be fake 10 miles away, it was more to show that "I know you are talking shit" rather than demanding proof. And just to underline, those two places back then were a bit different than today, more around the corner of "don't take internet seriously, have fun" and less cesspool of idiotism. No one expected any of the images on the site to be real or unedited and 99% of the time no one even cared.

 

This is pretty much same kind of stuff as Finnish leftist party leader said "vituttaa ["pisses off" or other vulgar extreme kind of annoyance] as a small animal" after they suffered a election failure and some (probably autistic) biologist needed to write to a nationwide newspaper how "animals really don't feel pissed off and if they could, the size of an animal doesn't correlate how pissed off they would feel". Like maybe it was more metaphorical thing to say, but if they insist we can go and freeze some squirrels nuts and research how pissed off that squirrel will be over his nuts being frozen.

[tikker]

1 hour ago, poochyena said:

What is the implication then, if not to suggest pics would prove the story to be true?

Well there used to be some weight to it. It's just much easier to generate something nowadays then it was back then before the advanced tools of today came along. It's the difference between having to actually do the hoax, put on a bigfoot suit, go be bigfoot and have someone shoot it and just googling some pictures of a nice forest and a few photoshop tutorials on how to convincingly blend your arbitrary creatures into the bushes.

 

Any form of "X or it didn't happen" will lose weight once the technology to easily fake X becomes availble to the masses.