A militia group stages a mock execution of a politician using a mannequin and posts it online. When asked, they claim it was "performance art." The media debates whether it was a threat or satire. In that gray zone, the militia wins. They have communicated their intent without consequence.

We are already seeing the signs. The employee who calls in sick with a reason so implausible ("My cat is on fire") that the manager cannot question it without looking absurd. The student who submits an essay composed entirely of emojis, then claims "post-literate expression." The defendant in a small-claims court who represents himself as a chatbot.

Or consider the of 1996, where a physicist submitted a gibberish paper to a humanities journal as a hoax. The paper was accepted. The scandal was contained. But the template was set: use the enemy’s own credibility against them by feeding them something so absurd that their acceptance of it delegitimizes them entirely.