Wednesday, the Buffalo Bills announced Damar Hamlin, in his OTA, participated in his first full football practice since he died twice on Monday Night Football against the Cincinnati Bengals.
I'm sorry, world: With what I know now -- and this extends far past football -- there is no way that I can either believe it's him or be convinced it is.
Why? All you have to look at is the current writers' strike, the upcoming actors' strike, and the overtaking of Artificial Intelligence in entertainment.
It all started out as ha-ha and fun. I came across, on a YouTube stream from the talent competition show America's Got Talent, a rather unique act of talent.
It was a group called Metaphysic with specialized cameras which could literally make anyone or anything appear like it was singing, dancing, whatever you want.
Well (and I'll be the first to understand this is not the ONLY issue -- but I do believe the most damning one), it appears as if there's a very real chance that the entertainment, as you knew it, is about to become a thing of the past.
Why?
I want you to consider the market for the following:
It's the next "Fast and the Furious" or "Fast" whatever movie -- except, with the Rock and Vin Diesel, YOU are driving. And not in a video game -- we're talking about an insertion of you into the movie in place of another actor.
Now, I think you can see why some actors would object.
Now, let's apply the normal "reasonable person test", and give this hypothetical, given my past:
A sex scene, with me and you-know-who...
Creeped out yet?
We could always take it, sex or otherwise, to the ultimate extreme...
If you aren't creeped out by THAT, I don't know what will. But that's the idea, to get you thinking of just how bad AI can be, in the wrong hands...
Imagine every 20s/30s neckbeard who wants a night with Taylor Swift, and that it could be half-feasible to represent a night with her in that regard -- without her involvement, consent, or compensation....
Now imagine the impossibility of video being verifiable evidence of much of ANYTHING anymore...
Yes, Karl Denninger and his Libertarian brigade have explored this as well.
But, rather than take it to a court of law, let's look at what information we apparently have "known" from last January and early February.
- January 2: Damar Hamlin is playing in a critical Monday Night Football game against the Cincinnati Bengals. Tee Higgins of the Bengals lowers his shoulder into Hamlin's chest, Hamlin making a tackle you've seen a million times, 100% textbook, legal, and supposedly safe. Hamlin collapses and dies on the field. 27 minutes later, after CPR and an AED, he "codes" (dies) again entering the hospital. He is brought back, apparently successfully, twice.
- January 22: Eleven days after he is reported to be released, but still with many questions per his actual condition, Hamlin is reported by CBS to be attending the Bills divisional playoff game, a rematch with the Bengals. However, any attempt to gain video evidence that it's actually Hamlin is obscured by mass security and deliberately obfuscative camera angles (both from the outside to his box and inside his box), so that no one gets a fair look at Hamlin that day. And, completely outside of both human nature and the NFL's exploitative nature of tragedies, Cincinnati dominates the game in Buffalo and wins 27-10.
- January 28, a video surfaces of Hamlin thanking everyone for millions in donations to his charity work.
- During Super Bowl week in Los Angeles (keep this thought in mind -- IN LOS ANGELES), Hamlin is featured, on camera, face front, to the public...
That is, if you believe it's Hamlin.
I don't, can't, and won't anymore.
Do I criticize Hamlin's family in any way with this? No.
But do I think the NFL would lie to people this comprehensively and exploitatively? Yes.
Do I think the NFL has the methodology to carry out this farce, and to enforce it? Yes, which see the arguments by people against the NFL being rigged in the first place.
And do I think the NFL has the motive to do so?
Yes, and it doesn't matter what the eventual story was or actually is.
The story the NFL is going with is the one most of us would actually hope -- a shock heart stoppage due to a blunt-force trauma in the chest, called commotio cardis. I have one problem with such a situation: You can't tell me he's not going to suffer another hit like that at some point in any continuance of his career. And how can you even think of justifying continuing the career if you're literally one LEGAL HIT (not a helmet foul, not your neck getting broken, but a clean hit to the chest) from more-than-probable death...
Then you have the other one I think it could be, though the anti-vaxx theorists took over the discussion so cleanly (Hello, do you remember why people were so panicked to build those field hospitals in China in late January and February of 2010? People were "thudding" THEN!!!) that we never found out if Hamlin has ever had COVID -- the concept of that he could be the up to 1 in 5 COVID cases getting "Long COVID" and having permanent debilitative effects. If this were the truth, not only would the NFL be materially finished, so would most, if not all, material sport -- AT ALL LEVELS.
And then there's the "Died Suddenly" hypothesis.
But no matter what actually happened here, there is no reason the NFL would want the truth to come out. And, given it's place as a centerpiece, if not THE centerpiece, of American culture (not just the sports machine), the NFL would go to any conceivable length to cover this up.
So yes, I am now afraid, given what I know is possible and the motivations, to claim deep-fake.
I'm sorry, world. If I'm wrong, I'll have God tell me.
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