We’d heard the warnings. We’ve felt the foreboding. We’ve seen Terminator 2, like, 400 times.
But this past week felt like a central turning point in online mendacity. One in which we watched as misinformation and Artificial Intelligence-gassed lies spread like… something fast, uncontainable, and irreversibly destructive.
With our neighbors staggering from unfathomable loss and many of us stuck indoors trying to avoid the toxic air, doom-scrolling has again regained its place as the #1 contactless sport.
If you’ve spent time on Instagram over the past seven days, you’ve likely seen at least one of these digitized or repackaged lies pop up in your feed and stories. It looks like even L.A. Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong got in on some fallacious, er, “fun,” recirculating a parody about Gavin Newsom that people just might be stupid enough to take at face value in 2025.
These videos can be dangerous, causing mass panic, outrage, danger, and enmity where it doesn’t need to be. It’s more urgent than ever that we learn to question what we see and avoid sharing things we cannot confirm.
Here are six online lies that have been proven false, despite their ubiquity. Within you’ll also find several outlets and resources committed to setting the rumors straight.
What You May Be Seeing: The famous Hollywood Sign in flames, like a scene ripped from the trims of Nathaniel West’s Day of the Locust or a lost painting by Ed Ruscha or Alex Schaefer. Appearing and recirculating on platforms like X with statements like “HOLLYWOOD SIGN IS ON FIRE!,” the images incited fear and panic in nearby residents and just about everyone familiar with the icon who didn’t look at it closely.
The Reality: It’s an AI-generated image, according to Newsweek, among other outlets, that worked to quickly dispel the lie, which spread quickly despite fire maps clearly showing what is called the “Sunset Fire” burning west of the landmark and relatively not close to the sign. Also, small detail, Hollywood was spelled “Hollywoodd.” As of last Thursday night, the Sunset Fire has been declared 100% contained. Also, you can watch the Hollywood sign live, if that’s the kind of thing you’re into.
What You May Be Seeing: A Black man carrying bundled items in a sack and a group of Black individuals moving a television set out of a house, which erupted into a reshared succession of accusations that they were “looting” in evacuation zones across various conservative social media sites.
The Reality: Homeowners, or people helping family, in Altadena neighborhoods, fleeing a horrific tragedy with their belongings or necessities, one of whom was featured speaking of their loss on KTLA. The spread of racist assumptions that they were “looting” was widely attributed to having started with a post on the account of one self-named Chingon Conservative, a Trump-loving race-baiter popular with other racist Trump lovers, who had reportedly framed the people as stealing from homes affected by tragic disasters. Now he’d like everybody to “move on,” but is said to have stopped short of apologizing.
What You May Be Seeing: Studly firefighters rescuing, comforting, and communing with scared, wild, and appreciative woodland creatures, both surrounded by scenes of blazing trees while not getting mauled, bitten, or suffocated by smoke. Where were these hunks when Bambi was on the run?
The Reality: The videos, which sometimes suggest the action took place in Los Angeles and sometimes hide behind the idea that’s purely “conceptual,” are all AI-generated, though convincingly realistic. Picking up wild animals, even dangerously cute ones, can result in terrible injuries. Of course, firefighters are heroes, and people are occasionally saving animals from the fires, including horses shown being guided to safety amid the Eaton Canyon fire and a firefighter petting a dog amid a horrendous blaze, only without the clean camera angles and with significantly more chaos around them. Plus, the firefighters are wearing protective equipment that obscures their assuredly handsome mugs.
What You May Be Seeing: Oregon, Arizona, and Washington firetrucks are being turned away from entering California to help fight the fires due to the state’s regulatory red tape or because they don’t meet emissions standards. One of many politicized lies meant to make California’s left-of-center politicians look bad and endlessly being repeated by sudden truth warriors on the Right. Local shit-rag, the Santa Monica Observer even published a story about it and later took the story down.
The Reality: Snopes, a website dedicated to separating truth from fiction for 20 years, dispels the lie, noting that the trucks were briefly halted for safety checks in Davis, CA, before being welcomed to continue south. A new website known as California Fire Facts has been established this week to counter such false claims.
What You May Be Seeing: South African firefighters arriving in an airport to pitch in on efforts to help fight the fires decimating parts of Los Angeles, even dancing like it’s one giant Paul Simon video.
The Reality: According to Fact Crescendo, a site devoted to debunking fake videos, what you’ve been seeing is old footage, purportedly from 2023, in which 200 firefighters arrived in Edmonton, Canada, to help fight fires in Alberta. This old video is being repackaged, recirculated, and shared, piggybacking on similar lies stating that firefighters from Mexico had arrived in L.A. days before they actually arrived.
What You May Be Seeing: This original inaccurate, false video started it all. The videos that first started being shared by many people with high-follower counts purported to show firefighters alleged to be from Mexico marching in a single-file formation to help with the wildfires.
The Reality: Mexico sent firefighters but did not arrive until Sunday. When every other publication and broadcast news station hit the story. This video was found to have been posted months earlier and took place in Wyoming. Worst yet, the original person who posted was scamming people out of money by asking for cash donations via Cash App on the fake videos.
