Imagine scrolling through your phone late at night. You pause on a video of a candidate saying something that seems outrageous; your chest tightens, you feel a flicker of anger, and your thumb hovers over the share button. In an age of constant content flowing straight into our pockets, this moment has become a daily ritual. Misinformation is inevitable, not because people are inherently dishonest, but because the systems that deliver information reward speed over accuracy and emotion over reflection. Between rumors of mental insanity, claims taken wildly out of context, and artificial intelligence deepfakes, voters must be cautious about what they believe as the November election draws near. Political attack advertisements have long been used to sway public perception during election season, but the upcoming midterms are being complicated in new ways by AI-driven media attacks. A video no longer has to be real to feel real. A quote no longer has to be spoken to be heard. The result is a landscape in which ordinary people—not just politicians—are expected to become detectives, sorting through layers of manipulation to find even a sliver of truth. It is tempting to throw up our hands and disengage. But doing so only leaves the most extreme voices in control. The better path is to slow down, question what we see, and remember that every piece of content was created by someone with a purpose. For voters, this means learning to live with uncertainty without being paralyzed by it. It means accepting that not everything online is a lie, but also that not everything is what it appears to be. The antidote to misinformation is not naïveté or cynicism; it is curiosity, patience, and the willingness to look before we leap.
One candidate who has felt the whiplash of this new media environment is James Talarico, the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate whose name has been dragged through a series of increasingly bizarre attack ads. Talarico has expressed frustration with advertisements claiming he is a communist or that he supports gender reassignment surgeries for children—both claims he says are false. These are not subtle distortions; they are sweeping, inflammatory accusations designed to make voters afraid without giving them time to verify anything. To make matters worse, AI deepfakes of Talarico have circulated online, including a fabricated video of him reading from a “King James (Talarico) Bible,” a fake artifact meant to fuel conservative criticism of his faith. The image of a politician holding a scripture that never existed should be laughable, but it is not harmless. Deepfakes are dangerous because they trade on our instinct to trust our own eyes. When we see a face we recognize and a voice that sounds familiar, we rarely stop to ask whether the footage was constructed. Talarico’s experience shows how quickly a political campaign can shift from arguing about policy to fighting for basic reality. Attack ads have always been brutal, but they used to be bound by the need to look plausible. Now, technology allows falsehoods to be manufactured with terrifying precision. For voters, the takeaway is not to assume every ad is fake, but to recognize that the tools of deception have grown more sophisticated. If a candidate can be made to say anything, then the question is no longer simply “What did they say?” but “Who created this, and why?” That is a harder question, but it is one we cannot afford to ignore. The more we understand how deepfakes work, the less power they have over us.
Young voters, especially those who have grown up with social media, are often caught in the crossfire of these attacks. Olivia Galanski, a Cypress sophomore, said she sometimes feels frustrated by the influx of “redundant and ridiculous” political attack ads. There is a particular weariness in her voice when she talks about the constant stream of negativity—ads that repeat the same talking points, the same ominous music, the same grainy photos, all designed to make someone look like a monster. Galanski pointed to one ad that called Talarico a “freak,” a word so childish and over-the-top that it seemed to backfire. “With calling James Talarico a ‘freak,’ they tried to use that name against him, but it sort of backfired on them,” she said. “Their ads are so ridiculous that they can’t be taken seriously, especially when they make things up that are easily fact-checked.” There is something hopeful in her reaction. She is not fooled by the exaggerations, and she is not alone. Many young voters have developed a kind of media literacy through sheer exposure; they have seen too many memes and too many misleading edits to take everything at face value. But there is also a danger in becoming so cynical that we dismiss everything, including real reporting and real evidence. When every ad seems ridiculous, we may stop trying to distinguish between the merely exaggerated and the completely false. That is exactly what manipulators want. They want us to feel hopeless, because hopeless people do not vote. Galanski’s frustration is understandable, and her instinct to laugh at absurd claims is healthy. The challenge is to hold onto that skepticism without letting it curdle into apathy. We can roll our eyes at bad ads and still take the time to learn what the candidates actually believe. We can laugh at the “freak” label and then go read a reliable source about Talarico’s record. That combination—humor plus effort—may be the best defense we have.
For those who want to go beyond their gut instincts, there are practical tools and patient guides ready to help. Sinai Wood, an associate professor and documents librarian, advises students to use the fact-checking resources provided by the Baylor Library system. Her advice is simple but profound: “Get out and listen to the other side,” she says, and “find balance.” In a time when our feeds are designed to show us more of what we already agree with, stepping outside our own echo chambers is an act of resistance. Wood acknowledges that students in 2026 are not facing a brand-new phenomenon; misinformation has existed for as long as people have communicated. What has changed is the volume and speed. “It’s just that we have more information coming at us,” she said, “and sometimes we don’t take the time to evaluate what we’re reading.” That lack of time is not a personal failing; it is a structural feature of modern life. Our phones buzz, notifications pile up, and the next scandal replaces the last one before we have even processed the first. Wood also warns about the way AI and social media can lead us down a rabbit hole. One outrageous claim leads to another, and before long, we are convinced that everything is corrupt and nothing can be trusted. “If we don’t go out of our own echo chambers,” she says, “we may never see the other side.” Her advice is not to abandon our values or to pretend both sides are always equally right. It is to be brave enough to read opposing viewpoints, to check sources, and to sit with discomfort. That kind of balance does not come naturally, especially when outrage feels more urgent than understanding. But it is exactly what democracy requires. The library, with its databases, librarians, and curated guides, is an underappreciated weapon in the fight against misinformation. It offers a quiet place where facts still matter and where students can learn to think, not just react.
A concrete example of how misinformation works can be seen in an advertisement run against Attorney General Ken Paxton. The ad claimed that Paxton voted to protect animal abusers, a phrase that immediately triggers an emotional response. Who could possibly support animal cruelty? The claim, however, was deemed “mostly false” by fact-checkers. The vote in question did not decrease punishment for the crime; the characterization was an exaggeration of the true intent of the vote. In other words, the ad took a complex legislative action and compressed it into a shocking soundbite. This is how misinformation often operates: it is not always a complete fabrication, but a twisting of reality that plays on our fears and moral instincts. Wood says that when students come across information that seems unreal or outrageous, they need to consider a variety of things. First, who is saying it? Does the source have the authority and credentials to provide this information? A random meme account is not the same as a news organization or a government record. Second, are other sources saying the same thing? If a story only appears in one place, or only in partisan outlets, that is a red flag. Third, trace where the story is coming from. A screenshot of a tweet is not evidence; the original post, the date, and the context all matter. This kind of detective work may sound tedious, but it does not have to take hours. Sometimes a simple web search is enough to reveal that a viral claim is old, out of context, or manufactured. The bigger challenge is emotional. When we are angry, we want to share immediately. When we see a candidate we dislike doing something terrible, we want it to be true. Wood’s advice asks us to pause in that moment of excitement and ask a few quiet questions. That pause is a small act of self-control, but it can stop the spread of misinformation before it reaches hundreds of other people.
As the November midterms draw near, the ever-changing nature of media and the way candidates can manipulate it in their favor continue to shape voter attitudes. Wood sympathizes with students who may not be accustomed to the level of skepticism required to discern the truth behind political claims. “We know that information has value, and students tend to be, for the most part, very trusting of things that are written in print or they see online,” she said. That trust is not naive; it is a natural response to a world where information is abundant and easy to access. But the same ease that makes information available also makes it easy to publish lies that look just as polished as the truth. Wood and her colleagues try to teach students to “sift through the information,” to use their minds as filters rather than sponges. This is a skill, and like any skill, it requires practice. It also requires humility—the willingness to admit that we might be wrong, that a source we trusted may have misled us, or that a story we shared was not what we thought. In the end, the fight against misinformation is not about winning a political argument. It is about preserving the ability to have shared conversations in the first place. If we cannot agree on basic facts, then we cannot have a democracy. If every video can be faked and every quote can be invented, then trust becomes impossible. But the answer is not to retreat into cynicism or to stop caring. The answer is to become more thoughtful, more curious, and more deliberate. We can laugh at ridiculous ads, fact-check outrageous claims, listen to people we disagree with, and still make up our own minds. That is what it means to be a citizen in an age of artificial intelligence and infinite information. It is harder than it used to be, but it is not impossible. It just requires us to pay attention, to ask questions, and to remember that behind every piece of content there is a human being with a choice to make. We have the same choice. We can be passive consumers of whatever the algorithm pushes our way, or we can be active participants in our own democracy. The election will be decided by people who take that responsibility seriously. Let us be among them.