The internet is such a fun and exploratory world. Makes us laugh and makes us cry, but more and more recently it’s just gotten confusing. I’m sure if you were on any online spaces on March 1st you saw the infamous Alexis Stone post:
It’s very easy to have an initial knee-jerk reaction to: “Jim Carrey is being impersonated by Alexis Stone at the award ceremony?”
If you were me on March 1st, you saw the Alexis Stone image first and probably laughed and scrolled away initially. Only to be met with a gazillion more posts with various angles of “Jim Carrey” (or “Jim Scarrey”) at the Cesar Awards where objectively something was… off?
Then you find a repost of a repost of a repost of Alexis Stone and find yourself lost in the comments.
Looking at the comments is a bit hard to navigate. There are a lot of various different ideas (and funny reaction memes), but we have to stop and really look at what’s happening before we send it out. I know my initial reaction was a deep sigh and I immediately wanted to share it with some of my closest friends (one of which is a big JC fan).
But we have to pause and ask oursevles:
What do we already know to be ‘Tru’?
(I’m sorry if this isn’t a pun-safe space you might need to find other coverage.)
- Well we know that the media has a penchant for spreading misinformation about celebrity clones. “Ms Mojo” has posted a video of “20 Absurd Celebrity Cloning Conspiracies”, Jim Carrey isn’t the first and he won’t be the last.
- We also know that there is a large issue with plastic surgery. Articles like this one from CBS news, videos on Youtube such as this one, even refer to plastic surgery as a pandemic sweeping across Hollywood. If you’re wanting a more entertaining commentary on the effects of being in the public eye on one’s self image and how it connects to physical cosmetic procedures check out ‘The Substance’.
So now that we know that we can take a deep breath and if you did believe it, you’re not alone! If you are a complete skeptic (like myself) maybe you didn’ t believe it and just want to scroll past…but it’s always important to look into the issue. Maybe you’ll learn something new about yourself, the media or even Jim Carrey. (I learned that he doesn’t have any social media of his own! I also learned that he is in so many more movies that I need to see!)
Behind ‘The Mask’: Investigating the Source
I’m treating the Alexis Stone Instagram post as our “source” as it was my first introduction to the issue. We have quite a few questions about this source (especially if you’re me who has no social media presence as it relates the world of fashion and makeup).
Who is Alexis Stone?
Alexis Stone is a known drag-performer. Best known for their intense and hyper-realistic makeup looks impersonating celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence.
They even make public appearances in these drag/celebrity personas, like their apperance/perfomance at the Balennciga Awards as Mortia. Knowing that it may not be too far fetched to believe that this really was just another performance.
Where did they claim to appear?
This is the important part and why many fans were up in arms about the claim. Alexis Stone was claiming not only to have attended the 2026 Cesar Awards, France’s most acclaimed film awards, In Jim Carrey’s place (you can learn more about the Cesar Awards here). But also received an award in his place with the attempt to completely fool the audience. Not a performance or an appearance but truly assuming the identity of Jim Carrey.
Finding Other Coverage
Before we draw conclusions from just that let’s look at the actual acceptance speech. (Delievered in amazing French by the way!)
Jim Carrey is known for keeping a relatively private life. Not making many public appearances it’s hard to keep track of what exactly he looks like on a day to day basis. However, if we compare it to his last public appearance when he inducted Soundgarden into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he definitely looks different. If we look at the coverage of that event only 3ish months prior the difference actually seems very drastic.
Maybe he really is Alexis Stone under there… OR maybe we can pause… and brainstorm a few more reasons why Jim Carrey might look different based on what we know about Hollywood.
“Botox!” was my first thought after watching that interview. You can see the differences in his face are placements where botox is usually injected or alterativaly locations that might be targets for plastic surgery. This wouldn’t be the first celebrity to get botox done and he definitely wouldn’t be the first to have a botox job that is a bit messed up maybe.
You can actually see the bruising on his face that is traditional with the healing process of a lot of cosmetic surgerys as pointed out by various sources on social media such as Dr. Sammi on instgram.
But after a quick search I was able to find a lot of “experts” talking about his potential cosmetic surgical interventions. However, I found an Yahoo Article that consulted a “Dr. John Spiegel” about his opinion on the matter to which he has responded: “He has 100 percent had botulinum” referring to botox as well as speculating about face-lift and eyebrow treatments as well.
A great source for trying to navigate potential misinformation would be “Verified” by Mike Caufield and Sam Wineburg. Verified takes you through various steps and various tools you can use to verify informatio on line. One of these concepts they introduce is “lateral reading”. Lateral reading is all about leaving the original site and looking up different components ofthe site, the authors, the site itself, and any claims that they make. Like getting a second or third opinion.
Some lateral reading of Dr. John Spiegal reveals that he really is a cosetemic surgeon who wuold be able to accurately identify such procedures. A quick google search pulls up his practice’s home page which claims he has been presented on various famous shows, you can see reviews about his work on Google as well and you can even find his profile on the Boston Medical Center. He’s an easy guy to find and doesn’t seem to have any notable reason for making up lies about Jim Carrey’s possible procedure.
We also received statements from Jim Carrey’s publicist not long after the incident that it really was Jim Carrey. Many sources, such as the Daily Mail, have confirmed that Jim Carrey had been practiving his speech for months to deliver it in such phenomenal French. It’s confirmed on various sites including the original source, TMZ.
Are we Getting Dumb and Dumber?
Despite all this, what still makes the clone theory or Alexis Stone so believable? How were people being tricked by this even after Carrey’s publicist released his statement. Even looking at different angles of Carrey on the same night throughout the night the difference is visible but it looks a lot more like the Carrey images most conspiracy accounts are clinging to. Some people even compare his appearance with past appearances and have drawn similarities between the two such as his dimples:
There are quite a few factors, such as Jim Carrey’s incredibly private life. It’s harder to track what celebrities look like when it’s 3 whole months between appearances! (3 months may not seem like a long time but in the public eye that’s considered private).
Jim Carrey, the comedian, did in factclaim to use decoys in a 2008 segment on the Letterman show.
Although clearly a joke (or maybe not clearly for some) it was said almost 20 years ago now and recently resurfaced among the chaos.
There is also a giant issue with media literacy.
Books like “Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Business, Economics, Social Sciences, and Humanities” talk about media literacy and how the rise in hoaxes, such as Jim Carrey’s clone or decoy theories, are damaging to the trust in media outlets.
There’s also the glaringly obvious detail I have skimmed past for right now that adds a layer of complexity to this. A topic that seems to be at the center of just about every debate ever: AI.
Alexis Stone’s original post was AI.
If you didn’t know, now you do, USA today confirmed with their technology that the post was constructed with AI.
The image itself to me was initially very obviously AI and I thought that it was just a (bad) joke. However, with the age of AI there was at least a sliver of doubt. I knew in my heart it was fake but when I looked back at it, I found myself (for just a second I promise!) questioning if it really was AI.
It’s scary! In an era of real deepfakes and Ai generated content, understanding the differences is getting harder and harder. Even notable newstations such as FoxNews have fallen to the scam of AI generated content.
The harmful portion of this whole “scandal” (I hesitate to even call it that), is that yes it harms Jim Carrey. A man clearly pushed by the public to get these procedures done just to have the backlash that he received for it. However, dumb jokes like this make the problem worse. More and more it is getting harder to figure out what to believe.
So… What Egg-actly can we Do?
This article outlines a lot of the societal implications of allowing deep fakes and AI misinformation to spread: such as the legal effects, the “erosion of public trust”, and how these deep fakes can be especially harmful democratic societies where opinion and public discussion are so crucial. It also outlines some steps to mitigating the spread of AI misinformation such as community flagging or algorithm detection. These work, sure, but is still content that is falling through the cracks. The most interesting backup to this issue that I’ve read being put into place is AI detecting itself….
AI identifying itself there just seems to be an inevitable problem. A study was done to see just how effective these AI detection tools were and “the vast majority of detectors falls below 60% [detection rate], hovering around the level of random guessing.” Random guessing!
It’s not helpless case. It may seem overwhelming, keeping up with it all, but all it really takes is a bit of time and patience. As Caulfield and Wineburg detail “Verified”, with the scarcity effect further detailed here, with a overwhelming influx of information there is a scarcity of attention. So don’t let your attention wander and don’t over egg-haust yourself. Just take a moment to breathe, sit down and sift through the information.
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