The Suspicion Tax
Last week, Jim Carrey accepted an honorary César Award in Paris. He gave the speech entirely in French. He traced his family roots back to a great-great-great-great-grandfather born in Saint-Malo. His daughter, his grandson, and his partner were in the audience. His publicist was there. His friend Michel Gondry was there.
And within hours, the internet decided it wasn’t him.
A drag artist posted photos suggesting he’d impersonated Carrey using prosthetics. Conspiracy accounts declared the real Carrey had been cloned. An influencer’s post claiming body double got 180,000 views. Megan Fox commented asking if it was real. Snopes had to fact-check it. The César Awards organizer issued a formal statement. Carrey’s publicist told TMZ, flatly: “Jim Carrey attended the César Awards, where he accepted his Honorary César Award.”
It was him. It was always him. He’s 64. He looked a little different.
But here’s the part I can’t shake: I saw this story everywhere for days, and even knowing it was almost certainly nonsense, there was a moment where I thought, “But what if?”
That moment is the piece.
When Suspicion Becomes the Default
We’ve been conditioned. Deepfakes, AI-generated content that’s indistinguishable from the real thing, years of brands and institutions bending the truth just enough that we stopped giving anyone the benefit of the doubt. The conspiracy crowd believes nothing is real because they think powerful people are hiding the truth. The rest of us believe nothing is real because we’ve seen how easy it is to manufacture something that looks true.
The result is the same: a baseline of suspicion that applies to everything. A celebrity’s face. A product claim. An origin story. A five-star review.
What This Means If You Market Anything
Marketing has always been, at some level, the art of making people believe. Not in a manipulative way. In the way that a great magazine cover makes you believe this issue is worth your time. The way an origin story makes you believe the people behind the product actually care.
That belief requires trust. At InStyle, we earned it issue by issue. Every recommendation, every feature, every cover had to deliver. If we put a product on the page, it had to be good, because the reader was trusting us with their time and their money. That trust wasn’t a strategy. It was the product.
What happens when the person you’re trying to reach has already decided you’re probably lying?
Your origin story? Someone will say it’s manufactured. Your sustainability claims? Greenwashing before they’ve read the details. Your AI disclosure? You’re hiding how much you’re actually using. The cost of being caught in a lie has always been high. What’s new is that brands are paying the cost of being suspected of lying even when they’re telling the truth.
That’s the suspicion tax. And every brand is paying it now.
Building When Nobody Believes Anything
I don’t have a tidy framework for this one. But a few things I keep coming back to.
Specificity is the antidote to suspicion. “We source ethically” means nothing. “We work with three family-owned farms in Vermont and here are their names” means something. The more granular you are, the less room there is for someone to project doubt onto your story.
Show the work. At InStyle, we put prices on the page when no other fashion magazine did. Not to be provocative. Because hiding information felt like we didn’t trust the reader. In a suspicious world, transparency isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the only currency that still works.
Consistency compounds. One campaign doesn’t build trust. Showing up the same way, with the same values, issue after issue, quarter after quarter, is what does. It’s not viral. And it’s the only thing that works when everyone’s looking for a reason to doubt you.
And accept that you can’t convince everyone. Some people are going to think Jim Carrey was cloned no matter what. You’re not marketing to them. You’re marketing to the vast middle who want to believe but need a reason to.
Will The Real Jim Carrey Please Blink Twice
Jim Carrey flew to Paris. He learned a speech in a language he doesn’t speak. He cried on stage. He thanked his father, who taught him “the value of love, generosity and laughter.”
And the internet’s response was: prove it.
That’s the world we’re marketing in now. The brands that will win aren’t the ones with the best story. They’re the ones who’ve earned the right to be believed.