In the hours and days after catastrophic floods swept through Nepal, the world did what it always does in times of crisis: it turned to the internet to understand what was happening, to check on loved ones, and to bear witness to a disaster that was already too enormous to grasp. But instead of clarity, many viewers were met with something darker—a relentless stream of graphic, uncensored, and often fabricated content that treated human suffering as spectacle. One video in particular, which showed two men allegedly stealing earrings from the body of a flood victim, had already accumulated millions of views on YouTube by Monday. The footage was raw and unblurred, with no attempt to protect the dignity of the dead. Another clip, showing the recovery of a body with severe injuries to its lower half, was shared tens of thousands of times, circulating across platforms with no warning, no context, and no compassion. The effect was immediate and visceral. Viewers described feeling their hearts race before they even registered what was on screen, then swiping away in panic. The dead and their grieving families were being turned into content, and the world was being forced to watch.
What made this moment even more unsettling was the discovery that much of the most viral material was not even real. Alongside the authentic but brutal footage, a parallel universe of AI-generated fabrications and recycled images from older disasters was flooding social media, dressed up as fresh evidence from Nepal. One paid account on X, formerly known as Twitter, claimed to show a tourist filming floodwaters in Nepal being suddenly swept away. The footage was dramatic, terrifying, and completely misleading—it had actually been filmed along the Qiantang River in Zhejiang, China, in 2024. Another video, which surpassed one million views within a single day, purported to show an elephant rescuing a man being carried off by floodwaters. It was a powerful, almost mythic image, and people shared it eagerly, desperate for a story of heroism amid the devastation. But it too was old, filmed in India during a previous incident, and had nothing to do with the disaster unfolding in Nepal. The prevalence of these falsehoods was not accidental. Social media algorithms are designed to prioritize engagement, and disaster footage—especially when it is shocking, gruesome, or seemingly miraculous—tends to generate exactly the kind of feverish sharing that algorithms reward. A trekking guide who has worked in Nepal for twelve years spoke to reporters with a sense of weary frustration. “I’m aware that false videos and information have recently been spreading on social media,” he said. “Trust and truth are more important than anything during a disaster, and it is deeply concerning to see actions that undermine the morale of people working together to help.”
The human cost of this digital deluge is not limited to the spread of lies. For ordinary internet users, the experience of scrolling through such content has become a source of genuine psychological distress. In online communities, people began to speak out about what the endless parade of unvetted images was doing to them. “Bodies are shown uncensored in short-form videos,” one user wrote in the comment section of a community post. Another admitted, “My heart starts racing before I even know what’s on the screen, so I swipe to another video.” The reactions reveal a troubling dynamic: people are being exposed to trauma without consent, their feeds transformed into a gauntlet of horror that they must navigate just to check the news. Some have even shared content themselves, only to later realize they had been duped. An office worker surnamed Seong described exactly that experience. “The posts showing what was supposedly happening in Nepal were so shocking that I shared one, but I took it down after finding out it was AI-generated,” she said. Her story is a reminder that misinformation does not spread because people are cruel or careless by nature, but because the emotional pull of a disaster is so strong that our instinct to share and warn others can override our critical thinking. Even established media organizations were not immune. Several Korean outlets were forced to retract or edit articles that had inadvertently used AI-generated images as part of their coverage. Meanwhile, the Nepalese authorities, overwhelmed by the scale of the misinformation crisis, formally asked Meta and TikTok on Friday to move swiftly to remove AI-generated videos and false posts, and to reduce the visibility of content that portrays the disaster in an excessively sensational manner.
This is not an isolated incident, nor is it the first time that the digital afterlife of a tragedy has inflicted wounds on the living. During the 2022 Itaewon crowd crush in Seoul, videos of victims showing cyanosis—the bluish discoloration of the skin caused by oxygen deprivation—were circulated widely on platforms like YouTube and Instagram. Those images did not just disturb viewers; they contributed to broader social trauma, leaving an entire society to process a horror that was being replayed over and over on their screens. The psychological toll of such exposure has been documented by researchers. A 2024 study by Yoo Woo-hyun, a professor of media communication at Incheon National University, found that posting, sharing, and even simply viewing unfiltered photos and videos from disaster scenes on social media were all associated with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Similar findings have emerged from other countries. In a study of 516 people who did not directly experience the 2021 floods in Henan province, China, researchers discovered that greater exposure to disaster-related short-form videos was positively correlated with higher scores for depression, anxiety, and PTSD. These are not isolated emotional reactions; they are measurable, psychological injuries. Experts call this phenomenon vicarious, or secondhand, trauma—a condition in which people experience the symptoms of trauma not because they lived through the event themselves, but because they were repeatedly exposed to its aftermath through images and stories. In an era when short-form video is designed to be endlessly consumed, the boundary between witnessing and experiencing has collapsed, and with it, the mental health of millions of people who are simply trying to stay informed.
The legal and regulatory response to this crisis remains dangerously inadequate, especially in South Korea. Starting in January, businesses in Korea will be required to label AI-generated content under the Framework Act on the Development of Artificial Intelligence and the Creation of a Foundation for Trust. But individuals—the very people who are often responsible for creating and spreading the most viral falsehoods—are not subject to this requirement. This leaves a massive gap in accountability, and much of the burden for policing content falls on the platforms themselves, whose business models are built on engagement rather than accuracy. Experts argue that this is not enough. Moon Hyun-cheol, vice president of the Korean Association for Disastronomy, warned that false and manipulated information during a disaster can have consequences far beyond confusion. “It can delay rescue operations and deepen the suffering of bereaved families,” he said. He called for strong legal consequences for those who maliciously spread false rumors, arguing that the harm they cause is not abstract but deeply tangible. The problem, however, is that legal action after the fact does little to prevent the initial damage. By the time a video has been debunked, it has already been seen by millions, internalized by those who believed it, and embedded in the collective memory of the disaster. The system is reactive, while the harm is immediate.
Ultimately, the fight against disaster-related misinformation is not just a technological problem or a legal problem; it is a human one. Yoo Hyun-jae, a professor at Sogang University’s College of Communication, pointed to a deeper cultural shift that has made this crisis so difficult to solve. “As advances in AI make it easier to create false content, we’re seeing people produce and consume it almost as a form of entertainment,” he said. This is a chilling observation. Disasters are no longer just tragedies; they are content. The dead are no longer just victims; they are props in a never-ending performance for the algorithms. Self-regulation by platforms, Yoo argued, has its limits. Reporting systems and institutional safeguards need to be strengthened, and tougher penalties must be imposed on those who maliciously spread such content, so that the deterrent is strong enough to make people think twice. But beyond policies and penalties, there is a need for a collective reckoning. Every share, every view, every moment of outrage or curiosity feeds the machine that profits from suffering. In the end, the most important response to a disaster is not the instantaneous reflex to consume and share, but the willingness to pause, to verify, and to remember that behind every video, there is a real person, a real family, and a real grief that cannot be reduced to engagement metrics. The floods in Nepal have devastated a nation, but the way the world has responded on social media has added another layer of sorrow—one that is entirely preventable. Trust and truth, as the trekking guide said, matter more than anything during a disaster. And preserving them requires not just better algorithms or stricter laws, but a deeper commitment from each of us to be more human in the face of tragedy.