Everything is Fake (And Nobody Cares)

Max

2 months ago

Have you noticed that more and more of our world feels, well, fake?

Online there’s a daily avalanche of dubious advice and information – about health, money, success, happiness. There are the fabricated reviews, inflated metrics and synthetic content. Influencers present themselves as authorities. The ‘fake it till you make it’ mantra has hardened into a business model. The insatiable demand to share everything, instantly, has turned experiences, ideas and expertise into performances rather than genuine understanding. And now, emerging technologies can generate convincing false information at unprecedented scale.

How did we get here? What can we do about it? And do we really care?

In the brand-new BBC Radio 4 series Everything is Fake (And Nobody Cares), Jamie Bartlett sets out to understand how fakery became such a normal part of modern life – and why so many of us now seem strangely unbothered by it.

Assisted by his custom designed AI companion, Jimmy Botlett – built to test ideas in real time, challenge assumptions, and demonstrate just how real AI is starting to become – Jamie Bartlett unpacks why authenticity is losing ground. Together, they plot a path through recent history to explore the forces reshaping our sense of what’s real: from the scripted spectacle of 1980s wrestling to the emergence of “your truth” culture, the normalisation of cheating, and the rise of self-made podcast stars.

Ultimately, Everything is Fake (And Nobody Cares) advances a deeper argument – that fakery is no longer a bug or a flaw in the system, but fast becoming the operating system itself. In a future shaped by generative AI and synthetic media, how will we tell fact from fakery? And will we even care enough to try?

Jamie Bartlett says: “Fakery isn’t new. Politicians have always lied and businesses have always inflated the numbers. What has now changed is that in so many parts of modern life, fakery is no longer punished. It is incentivised, rewarded, and often indistinguishable from success. That’s what I’m looking to explore in this new series for Radio 4.”

Daniel Clarke, Commissioning Editor for Factual Storytelling, BBC Radio 4 says: “This series goes way beyond the discussion about ‘fake news’ to identify a much bigger social and cultural shift – and to advance a fascinating and provocative thesis about how we got here. With ongoing advances in AI technology promising to make it more difficult than ever to tell what is real from what is synthetic, this series couldn’t come at a better or more relevant time.’

Everything is Fake (And Nobody Cares) launches on 11 March, as a boxset on BBC Sounds and airing weekly on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesdays at 9.30am.