Prof. Nipunika Shahid, Media Studies, School of Social Sciences, CHRIST University Delhi NCR
A mysterious traveler from a non-existent country captures global imagination — but the viral “Torenza Woman” reveals far more about technology, psychology, and politics than about parallel worlds.
A viral illusion, a manufactured mystery — and a warning about how easily truth can be rewritten in the age of artificial intelligence.
The Woman Who Never Was
It began like a scene out of science fiction — a woman at New York’s JFK Airport presenting her passport at immigration. The officer, puzzled, flips through it. The country listed is “Torenza.” There’s just one problem: no such nation exists. Within hours, the clip floods TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Theories erupt: “Time traveler?” “Alternate universe?” “Government cover-up?” Millions share and comment before anyone even asks if the video is real. Fact-checkers eventually expose the truth — the footage is AI-generated fiction, stitched together to look authentic. But the phenomenon it represents is very real.
From Taured to Torenza — Digital Folklore 2.0
The “Torenza Woman” is the digital cousin of an older urban legend — The Man from Taured, a traveler who supposedly arrived in Tokyo in 1954 with a passport from a non-existent country. What has changed is not the myth itself, but the medium.
Artificial intelligence now breathes cinematic life into old folklore. Deepfake technology and generative AI make it effortless to produce people, voices, and documents that never existed — a new mythology coded in pixels.
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The Psychology of Belief
Why do we fall for these stories? Because we want to. Humans are wired for narrative and wonder. The more mysterious something appears, the more our brains crave an explanation. This “curiosity gap” drives us to click, share, and believe before verifying.
In uncertain times, myths feel more comforting than facts. Online, they also come with a dopamine reward — likes, shares, engagement. The creators earn influence; the audience earns belonging. Together, they sustain a loop of entertainment masquerading as information.
Misinformation and the Algorithm Economy
What used to be rumor has evolved into a profitable business model.
Social media platforms no longer prioritize accuracy — they prioritize attention. The more shocking or emotional a post is, the more it’s boosted by algorithms designed to reward engagement.
According to a study published on SSRN (2024), content that sparks anger or curiosity performs far better than neutral or factual posts. In other words, the more a post provokes, the more the system promotes it.
Research by MIT economists adds that misinformation today is not limited to outright lies — it’s an ecosystem of half-truths, manipulative headlines, and misleading context that thrives because it’s profitable.
Fact-checkers like NDTV, AFP, and Factly traced the “Torenza” clip back to AI-generation tools, yet it continues to circulate on WhatsApp and Reddit, gathering millions of views. Studies also show that fake information spreads six times faster than the truth online.
A 2024 global survey found that two-thirds of users encounter fake news daily on platforms like Facebook and Instagram — and most don’t verify before sharing.
Sociologists now call viral stories like this one digital folklore.
Much like old village legends or oral myths, these online stories help people make sense of uncertainty — only now they’re powered by technology instead of campfires.
A 2023 study in Folklore Studies notes that platforms like TikTok and YouTube have become modern storytelling spaces where mystery and imagination spread faster than facts. Researchers call this “the algorithmic evolution of folklore.”
The “Torenza Woman” fits perfectly into this new mythology — a story that feels mysterious, cinematic, and just plausible enough to believe. She’s not a traveler from another world, but a reflection of ours: a world where curiosity, confusion, and code collide.
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Media Literacy — The New Survival Skill
If AI can fabricate entire realities, then learning how to decode them has become a life skill.
Studies show that over 70% of people now believe media literacy — the ability to question, verify, and interpret what we see online — is essential to surviving in the digital age.
Yet, research by Harvard’s Misinformation Review (2024) found that even digitally literate users often still share false content — not because they can’t spot it, but because emotion overrides caution.
The European Digital Media Observatory reports that raising media literacy can significantly reduce the reach of disinformation, but warns that this needs to start young. Worryingly, only 45% of teenagers say they can tell fake news from real — and nearly a third admit they’ve shared something later proven false.
Media literacy isn’t just about identifying fake content anymore. It’s about understanding why we react the way we do — and how our attention can be manipulated.
The viral rise of the “Torenza Woman” says less about technology and more about us.
We don’t just consume fake stories — we co-author them. Every time we click, react, or share, we become part of the amplification engine.
A 2024 Oxford study found that false information is 70% more likely to be reshared than verified facts on social media. That’s because emotion, not evidence, drives the digital public square.
Experts call this participatory misinformation: where the audience doesn’t just believe a story — it helps it go viral. Bots and coordinated networks accelerate it further, pushing content into millions of feeds before any fact-check appears.
Still, users with stronger “algorithmic awareness” — who understand how feeds and trends work — are more likely to resist
Political Power and Perception Control
And here lies the real danger — the point where viral illusion turns into political weaponry.
If an anonymous creator can make millions believe in a woman from a non-existent country, imagine what governments, political parties, and vested interests can do with the same technology.
AI-generated misinformation is no longer entertainment — it’s an instrument of influence, persuasion, and sometimes, quiet control.
Across the world, deepfakes and synthetic media are no longer fringe experiments. They’re becoming calculated tools of power.
In Slovakia’s 2023 elections, an audio recording surfaced just two days before voting. It appeared to feature opposition leader Michal Šimečka discussing how to rig votes. The clip, shared widely across Facebook and Telegram during the official “media silence” period, was later proven to be AI-generated. But the damage was done — voters had already heard it, and the fact-check came too late. Analysts now call it Europe’s first major “deepfake election moment.”
India saw similar tremors ahead of the 2024 general elections. The World Economic Forum warned that deepfakes were being used in campaign content — including fabricated “leaked” videos of political leaders. The Election Commission and private labs scrambled to flag suspect material. Ironically, while the technology to detect deepfakes improved, their sheer volume outpaced verification.
And these aren’t isolated stories. In the U.S., the FBI listed AI-generated videos among its top election-security concerns for 2024. Meanwhile, the Knight-Columbia Initiative examined 78 politically motivated deepfakes worldwide and found that most were designed to erode public trust — in elections, in journalism, or in democracy itself.
A 2024 global survey by the digital-identity firm Jumio revealed that only 46 % of people believe they can recognise a political deepfake, while fewer than half trust political news they see online.
The Oxford Internet Institute found that false information paired with video — even a short AI clip — is up to twice as persuasive as text alone. People are far more likely to remember and share it.
In fact, studies published by Oxford Academic show that fake news accompanied by AI visuals triggers higher emotional arousal and “truth bias” — the human tendency to believe what looks real.
That bias is precisely what propagandists exploit.
Researchers at Brookings Institution warn of what they call the “liar’s dividend.” Once deepfakes become common, real evidence can be dismissed as fake, and fake evidence can be passed off as real.
This blurring of truth works brilliantly for those seeking plausible deniability.
A politician caught on tape can now simply say, “That video’s AI-generated.”
A journalist’s investigation can be discredited as “manufactured.”
As a result, facts lose their power — not because they aren’t real, but because everything becomes questionable.
Information warfare today doesn’t look like tanks and trenches — it looks like timed leaks, coordinated botnets, and AI-shaped narratives.
Elections have become algorithmic battlegrounds where perception is the prize.
Governments and political actors employ armies of content creators, influencers, and digital strategists to seed stories that fit their agendas. Many use AI to personalise propaganda, tailoring videos and posts to match a voter’s fears, beliefs, or region.
According to WEF’s Global Risks Report 2024, misinformation and disinformation are now the world’s top short-term risks — ahead of climate or conflict. The report warns that AI will turbocharge political manipulation by lowering costs and increasing precision.
Even authoritarian regimes have embraced synthetic media to craft “alternate truths.” In one verified example, Myanmar’s state-aligned pages used AI-generated images of protests to distort international perception of civil unrest. Similar patterns appeared in Russia’s “Z-channels”, where deepfake videos purported to show Ukrainian soldiers surrendering — content later proven false.
Deepfakes don’t have to convince everyone — they just have to confuse enough people.
In democracy, doubt is the new weapon.
When citizens can’t tell what’s true, they retreat into partisanship and distrust. When voters stop believing facts, elections stop being about evidence and start being about emotion.
The “Torenza Woman” may seem harmless compared to fake campaign videos or AI-made riots, but the principle is the same: a convincing illusion, a delayed correction, and a permanently altered perception.
This is not tomorrow’s threat — it’s already here.
Information has become the new battlefield, and perception the most valuable weapon.
To defend truth, societies will need more than fact-checkers — they’ll need digital resilience, algorithmic transparency, and citizen awareness.
Because in an age where technology can create anything, trust — not truth — becomes the most contested territory in politics.
The Architecture of a New Era
The “Torenza Woman” never existed. Yet her story feels startlingly familiar — because she embodies something profoundly human: our longing for wonder, our vulnerability to illusion, and our willingness to trust what we can see, even when it’s a lie.
In many ways, the myth of Torenza is not about a traveler at all. It’s about us — a civilization standing at the intersection of imagination and manipulation, where technology no longer merely reflects reality, but reconstructs it.
We are living through what sociologists call the “Age of Synthetic Reality” — a time when truth, fiction, and perception merge seamlessly across screens.
A 2025 Pew Research survey found that 61% of adults worldwide admit they can no longer distinguish between authentic and AI-generated content. More strikingly, 72% said they shared at least one piece of online content last year that they later discovered was false.
In the U.S., deepfake detection company TrueMedia estimates that over 1.8 million AI-generated political videos were circulated online during 2024 — many viewed more than 10 million times before being flagged.
Meanwhile, India’s Internet Freedom Foundation recorded a 240% rise in synthetic videos and voices between 2022 and 2024, much of it tied to political or ideological messaging.
These numbers aren’t just data points; they’re signposts of a global shift — a world where belief itself has become editable.
The “Torenza Woman” stands as a mirror to our collective psyche.
She shows how easily we fall in love with the extraordinary, how fast we hit “share” before asking “true or false.”
She reminds us that misinformation doesn’t spread because people are foolish — it spreads because stories are powerful, and truth feels less thrilling than fiction.
AI has weaponized that instinct. It knows what grabs us: a face that looks real, a voice that sounds sincere, an image that confirms what we already believe.
When algorithms understand our emotions better than we do, the truth becomes negotiable.
The next viral illusion may not be about a fictional country or a mysterious traveler.
It could be a fabricated video of a leader declaring war, or a fake news clip triggering communal unrest, or a digitally cloned journalist confessing to bias.
And in that instant, millions might see it, believe it, and act before the truth catches up.
In Myanmar, deepfakes have already been used to misrepresent protest footage.
In the U.S., synthetic campaign videos are under active investigation.
And in several European nations, AI-generated “news anchors” now deliver government-friendly propaganda in multiple languages, blurring the line between official message and fabricated narrative.
Each illusion chips away at something sacred — our collective trust in what’s real.
Responsibility in the Age of Reprogrammable Reality
The question, then, isn’t whether technology can deceive us — it’s whether we’ll keep letting it.
Truth has never been this fragile — or this dependent on ordinary citizens.
Every share, every forward, every click is now an ethical choice.
We, the audience, have become the editors of reality itself.
And as digital tools grow more persuasive, our skepticism must grow proportionally sharper.
Perhaps the greatest literacy of this century won’t be reading or writing — it will be verifying.
It will mean asking: Who made this? Why now? What purpose does it serve?
The story of the “Torenza Woman” is a parable of our times — part mystery, part mirror, part moral.
She arrived from nowhere, but she carries a lesson from everywhere: that technology will always outpace truth unless humanity learns to slow down, question, and care.
The next illusion may not entertain — it may divide, deceive, or destroy.
But the antidote isn’t fear. It’s awareness.
In the end, the survival of truth won’t depend on machines or algorithms, but on us — on whether we still value authenticity over amusement, discernment over dopamine, and understanding over illusion.
Because in this programmable world, truth will survive only if people want it to.
The Torenza Woman doesn’t exist — but her story reveals how power, technology, and human belief can together reinvent reality itself.