It's embarrassing. Instead, they tell themselves, "well, it could have just as easily been real."

This has always been the case.

However, the more interesting thing going on is that we have never had to reckon with this problem anywhere near as much as we do now, since the barrier to creating fakes has been reduced from "skilled, motivated software user" to "all five billion humans who can write".

Edit: I think this comment is neutral enough to stand even under the new information that this might have been a cries-wolf situation, but I am acknowledging the fact.