Audiences panic at gimmicks they both detect and cannot fully trace

Evidence

This revelation, which is very easy to detect once one knows how the image is achieved, especially in photos where a mirror would seem impossible, caused a minor panic across social media and popular websites, with laments over feeling scammed or duped—a panic that affirms how Ngai describes fascination with the gimmick as a “combination of enigma with transparency” regarding “a process of production: … a conjunction of what we know, but also know that we don’t or can’t entirely know, or at least not on the same level, about how an object was brought into being.” — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 88