Post-Truth as a Business Model

Perceived value matters more than physical reality. That’s what it says in an industry report on AI-generated content, tucked between conversion rates and engagement metrics.

In 2016, “post-truth” was chosen as word of the year. It was about politics. About claims where impact matters more than accuracy. A lot of people were upset. It was seen as a warning sign.

Ten years later, the same idea shows up in industry reports, and nobody is upset. This time it’s about business, not politics. And in business, this was never a scandal. It was just called marketing.

Marketing has always worked the gap between perception and reality. The picture of the burger doesn’t look like the burger. Everyone knows that. We learned that advertising exaggerates, and we automatically adjust for it.

But AI moves the line. Marketing exaggerates. With AI, the product itself doesn’t need to be real. The influencer is generated, the photo shows a place that doesn’t exist, the review was written by no one.

When perceived value matters more than reality, reality becomes a cost factor. A generated image costs less than a photo shoot. The engagement rate is often higher. The math works out.

It works. That’s the problem. The numbers check out, and because they do, nobody asks whether an economy where reality is optional can be a good idea. The people building these systems read the sentence as strategy, not as a problem.

I don’t know where this leads. But I notice that nobody is asking.