The end of the year has a strange way of creating small pockets of pause. Between family gatherings, travel, and half-finished to-do lists, I’ve been trying to sneak in moments to think. Not about projects or deadlines, but about some of the bigger questions that feel like they’ve been crystallizing for me this year.

So much has shifted, and it’s happened quickly. Technology, platforms, expectations, even the basic ways we relate to images and information. The pace of that change is sometimes hard for me to wrap my head around, especially when it’s layered on top of the everyday rhythms of work, parenting, and trying to stay present during the holidays.

It’s in those unstructured moments that a particular sadness keeps resurfacing for me.

One of the quiet tragedies of our current media landscape is watching serious ideas borrow the wrong images just to be seen.

Health information rides on celebrity photos. Education policy is paired with eye-catching visuals that have nothing to do with the substance. Urgent social issues arrive wrapped in spectacle, not because creators are careless, but because relevance alone no longer earns attention.

I don’t blame the people making these choices. They are responding rationally to an irrational system. The algorithm is king, and keeping up with its shifting demands is now a full-time job. What feels sad is what this workaround symbolizes. We live in a world where importance must disguise itself to survive.

The image stops the scroll. The idea hopes to slip in afterward.

That trade has consequences.

Borrowed Attention, Shallow Arrival

When content relies on visuals that are tangential to the message, attention is borrowed rather than earned. The viewer arrives through familiarity or novelty, not curiosity. The promise of the image and the ask of the idea are misaligned.

We are asking people to care deeply, but training them to arrive shallow.

This matters because documentaries and policy communication have always depended on a basic contract with audiences. If you give us your time, we will give you understanding. If you look closely, you will see something true.

That contract is under strain from two directions at once.

Attention Is Broken, and Now Trust Is Too

The attention economy has already inverted values. Recognizability outperforms relevance. Interruption outperforms clarity. Familiar faces and emotional shortcuts crowd out context, complexity, and first-time voices.

But a deeper fracture is forming beneath the surface.

A recent New York Times article examining AI and documentary filmmaking raises a more existential concern. As AI-generated images and videos become increasingly convincing, audiences are less certain whether what they are seeing actually happened. Documentary, a form built on the belief that images bear witness to reality, is being asked to prove its credibility in an environment that rewards plausibility over truth.

Put these two forces together and the problem sharpens.

On one hand, serious nonfiction struggles to be seen unless it borrows attention from unrelated visuals. On the other hand, even when audiences do look, they are less certain that what they see can be trusted.

This is not just a creative crisis. It is a civic one.

What This Does to Documentary Form

Documentary has always relied on trust long before it relied on distribution. Trust that the images are connected to the truth. Trust that time spent will be rewarded with insight. Trust that the filmmaker is not baiting the viewer.

When documentaries are promoted with visuals that misrepresent or distract from their substance, that trust erodes before the film even begins. When AI enters the picture without transparency, it erodes further.

The result is a painful contradiction. Films that ask for patience are introduced through systems that reward impatience. Stories that depend on nuance are packaged for platforms that punish it.

Over time, this pressure reshapes creative decisions upstream. Shorter runtimes. Faster cuts. Clear villains. Simpler arcs. Not because they are truer, but because they are safer in an attention marketplace that equates speed with value.

Policy Communication Suffers the Most

Policy communication already operates at a disadvantage. It deals in abstraction, tradeoffs, and long timelines. When it borrows celebrity or spectacle to break through, two things happen.

First, the carrier becomes more memorable than the content. People remember who was posted, not what was explained. Second, emotion replaces comprehension. Outrage circulates faster than understanding.

The irony is stark. Policy adopts the aesthetics of virality, then wonders why public understanding does not deepen.

The tools designed to amplify urgency end up flattening meaning.

The Real Critique

The most damning critique is not that creators chase algorithms. It is that we have accepted a system where machines decide what deserves visibility, and humans adapt their values accordingly.

In that system, invisibility is treated as irrelevance. If something did not spread, it must not have mattered. If it mattered, it would have spread.

That logic quietly rewrites how we judge truth, impact, and worth.

The New York Times article makes clear that AI poses a threat not simply because it can fabricate images, but because it destabilizes our shared confidence in what is real. Paired with an attention economy that already rewards distraction over relevance, the danger compounds.

We are not just fighting for eyeballs anymore. We are fighting for belief.

Where This Leaves Us

None of this argues for rejecting platforms outright. It argues for naming the cost of playing by their rules.

When important stories must disguise themselves to be seen, something essential is being lost. When nonfiction must constantly prove its authenticity in a system optimized for engagement, trust becomes fragile.

Documentary and policy communication were never meant to win by interruption alone. Their power has always come from starting conversations that continue after the screen goes dark.

If the algorithm is king, then the work now is not to serve it better, but to decide what we refuse to sacrifice in the process.

Because attention without trust does not lead to understanding. It leads to noise.

And noise, no matter how loud, has never changed the world for long.