Easy one first: QE2 = Queen Elizabeth II.
As for simulating the continuing existence of a person, they use a wide variety of methods, as convenient, to keep the psyop going. We're familiar with the overt ones--masks, body doubles, DeepFakes, Photoshop, etc--but some of them are very subtle indeed.
Take the example of the least effort, most convincing: you'll see an article about an appearance a subject made somewhere, including a picture. Well, that proves it, right?
It would be easy enough to take an old photo, Shop it a bit to make it look like the place they were supposed to have been, and give it a phony caption, but the really funny thing is that I've never seen that. They just use an old stock photo and label it "Stock photo", or they don't label it at all, or they put in a photo without the subject in question, or they do not include a photo at all.
All these things serve to convince the reader the subject is still alive. Of course they are! Their death was never announced, was it? The absolute key is that no one is actually looking, but their subconscious absorbs the "evidence" all the same. I'm not special, I'm just looking.
There are endless variations on this theme, such as someone mentioning their encounter with the subject. The latest iteration on this--and it is absolutely effective--is that the news will "leak" that the subject has done something bad or embarrassing. Conspiracy theorists jump on it like a duck on a junebug, just as they are meant to.
Finally, as much talk as there has been about DeepFake, the voice aspect has been around even longer but somehow, strangely, never gets any play even in conspiracy circles:
After 20 Minutes of Listening, New Adobe Tool Can Make You Say Anything (Vice 11/5/2016)
There's sort of a funny coincidence about the date of the article. That's right at the time of a big election, and a huge controversy at that time and continuing until present is that one of the candidates had "said something on a hot mic" about "grabbing women by the pussy". Yet you will never hear a conspiracy theorist (who isn't me) question the authenticity of that clip.
That really should tell you something about how the human mind works and the state of "conspiracy theory".
EDIT: I take back what I said. There was one time I saw them Photoshop a recent event, and that was Gavin Newsom's 2022 re-election. There used to be a set of these, but they've black-holed them all. The remaining Shopped pic of his "victory speech" is here:
Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis victory speeches pushed wildly different views of ‘freedom’ (San Francisco Chronicle 11/9/2022)
The other major paper just went with some kooky random pic, who even knows if it's real:
California voters elect Gov. Gavin Newsom to a second term (Los Angeles Times 11/8/2022)
Bizarre when you actually look, isn't it?
Easy one first: QE2 = Queen Elizabeth II.
As for simulating the continuing existence of a person, they use a wide variety of methods, as convenient, to keep the psyop going. We're familiar with the overt ones--masks, body doubles, DeepFakes, Photoshop, etc--but some of them are very subtle indeed.
Take the example of the least effort, most convincing: you'll see an article about an appearance a subject made somewhere, including a picture. Well, that proves it, right?
It would be easy enough to take an old photo, Shop it a bit to make it look like the place they were supposed to have been, and give it a phony caption, but the really funny thing is that I've never seen that. They just use an old stock photo and label it "Stock photo", or they don't label it at all, or they put in a photo without the subject in question, or they do not include a photo at all.
All these things serve to convince the reader the subject is still alive. Of course they are! Their death was never announced, was it? The absolute key is that no one is actually looking, but their subconscious absorbs the "evidence" all the same. I'm not special, I'm just looking.
There are endless variations on this theme, such as someone mentioning their encounter with the subject. The latest iteration on this--and it is absolutely effective--is that the news will "leak" that the subject has done something bad or embarrassing. Conspiracy theorists jump on it like a duck on a junebug, just as they are meant to.
Finally, as much talk as there has been about DeepFake, the voice aspect has been around even longer but somehow, strangely, never gets any play even in conspiracy circles:
After 20 Minutes of Listening, New Adobe Tool Can Make You Say Anything (Vice 11/5/2016)
There's sort of a funny coincidence about the date of the article. That's right at the time of a big election, and a huge controversy at that time and continuing until present is that one of the candidates had "said something on a hot mic" about "grabbing women by the pussy". Yet you will never hear a conspiracy theorist (who isn't me) question the authenticity of that clip.
That really should tell you something about how the human mind works and the state of "conspiracy theory".