3 Oct 2026
Rabbit Hole Parasol Stories — A Rabbit Hole Parasol Allegoric Apologue: Enough for Some Things
What makes someone—or something—worthy of our trust?
Is it what they are? Whether they’re human? Whether they’re real? Or is trust something built much more slowly, through what happens from one interaction to the next?
“Enough for Some Things” is a Rabbit Hole Parasol Allegoric Apologue: a fictional story built around a very real question.
This episode of Rabbit Hole Parasol Stories will be released Friday, October 2, 2026 at 10:00 PM.
Rabbit Hole Parasol Stories take real-world events, research, history, oddities, and uncomfortable questions and turn them into original fictional narratives—not to tell you what to think, but to leave you with something worth thinking about.
This particular rabbit hole started with a joke I saw online about a generation that grew up perfectly comfortable trusting frogs, pigs, counting vampires, grouches in garbage cans, and all manner of obviously fictional characters—yet often finds itself deeply suspicious of the very real people and artificial systems talking to us today.
From there came a much bigger question:
Maybe trust was never about whether something was real at all.
The fictional story was inspired by several real-world threads involving artificial personalities, audience trust, hidden motives, responsibility, and the strange ways human beings form relationships with characters, institutions, people, and machines.
SOURCES / FURTHER RABBIT HOLES:
Joseph Weizenbaum, ELIZA, and the “ELIZA effect” — Smithsonian Magazine:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-the-computer-scientist-behind-the-worlds-first-chatbot-dedicated-his-life-to-publicizing-the-threat-posed-by-ai-180987971/ (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-the-computer-scientist-behind-the-worlds-first-chatbot-dedicated-his-life-to-publicizing-the-threat-posed-by-ai-180987971/)
Sesame Workshop — the 1985 decision to have adults finally believe Big Bird about Snuffleupagus:
https://sesameworkshop.org/about-us/mission-and-history/ (https://sesameworkshop.org/about-us/mission-and-history/)
Lonelygirl15 and the revelation that the seemingly authentic YouTube diarist was a scripted fictional character — WIRED:
https://www.wired.com/2006/12/lonelygirl/ (https://www.wired.com/2006/12/lonelygirl/)
FTC guidance on disclosure of paid relationships and sponsored recommendations:
https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/disclosures-101-social-media-influencers (https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/disclosures-101-social-media-influencers)
Research on the “AI empathy choice paradox” — people preferred human empathy while sometimes rating AI responses as more empathetic and feeling more heard:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44271-025-00387-3 (https://www.nature.com/articles/s44271-025-00387-3)
CI™ — Collaborative Intelligence
Human envisioned. Intelligently combined. Collaboratively created.
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