“The Dead Internet Theory” is New and Spreading Everywhere

Is the internet alive? Dead? Or both?

I don’t know many of you reading this, only a few of you have ever met me, and my comments can feature bots, scammers, and fake accounts. Yet we treat everything that happens on the internet as a ‘real interaction.’

Real as though the people we’re interacting with are people, and not just a computer program designed to mimic human interaction.

This makes me wonder…

How much of the internet is actually just bots, artificial intelligence, misinformation, disinformation, echo chambers, deep fakes, fake accounts and completely biased corporate algorithms?

A lot? A little? A whole lot?

This is what ‘’Dead Internet Theory’ is all about.

It suggests that artificial intelligence and algorithms have almost entirely taken over the internet and that the web is slowly dying because of it.

Essentially, you’re a cog in some great machine.

Life is a dream within a dream.

It’s a scary thought, but it’s also a very real possibility.

The internet isn’t as big as people think

Who could forget when Elon Musk said he wouldn’t buy Twitter because “there are too many bots.”

Lies. Corporate lies!

He can’t fit the bill.

He’s a hack posing as Howard Hughes…

…Except he’s right. Twitter does have bots. A lot of bots. They compromise 5% of Twitter’s total users, however, they also account for about 21%-29% of the content. A study conducted by Similarweb also found that only 19% of real, authenticated Twitter users in the US generate content every day.

“The issue is more with bots that evade that officially sanctioned path, faking human interaction. Often, they do this so they can artificially inflate sentiment for and against stocks, products, politicians, or causes.”

— Similarweb study

The internet isn’t as big as people think. There is a convergence to only a handful of websites instead of a huge array with Google, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok enjoying the spoils — and no one knows the exact certainty of the bots and AI on these websites.

(not to mention the native advertising and corporate conflicts of interest)

These are the sites that control the internet. If bots are controlling them then what does that say about the internet?

It says that the internet is dead.

And not only does Dead Internet Theory suggest that the internet is slowly being controlled by bots, but also that it learns your habits and thoughts, tailoring an echo chamber for you. It could even include reactionary bots to craft a digital world of opposing opinions. Genius.

The only solution, probably

Charles Bukowski once said, “the problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”

And that’s probably the only solution to this problem.

The internet has lost its novelty and most healthy-minded people are slowly beginning to realize — after documentaries like ‘The Social Dilemma’ and shows like ‘Black Mirror’ — that it is no substitute for real-life relationships.

After all, The Dead Internet Theory is a literal cancer.

All original content on the internet, all independent, unsponsored, unfiltered voices are being killed by AI and corporate oligarchs. Just look at native advertising in journalism. Despite slower growth in 2020 due to the pandemic, native ads — otherwise known as editorials secretly paid for by companies — grew by over two billion dollars in 2020 and have increased by over 22 billion since 2018.

Objective journalism is dying.

And it is getting harder to find an honest take.

Native Advertising

The final point: Accelerationism

People are angrier.
People are more divided. People are hornier and kinkier too.

The internet has made all of these things worse.

Accelerationism is what’s happening.

The internet acts as a feedback loop making people numb to behaviors they’d never tolerate in real life. It’s a form of digital anesthetic:

• Male virginity under 30 years old is at record highs

• Mental illness is steadily increasing

• Attention and short-term memory are down

I’m interested in where things end up; it already seems like many social norms are being eroded. People are becoming less and less able to exist IRL, as the kids say, opting instead to exist online more and more; it’s why we text instead of talk, online date instead of meet people organically, order online, and use the self-check-out lanes.

The internet is accelerating us into a Huxlyean dystopia that will only get worse as AI gets better.

Final Thought

There is an internet out there, it’s just filtered out of most search engines intentionally or shuffled to the bottom pages under websites that pay to be elevated. It’s warped beyond recognition.

I’m not sure if the current state of things can even be called the internet anymore. It’s more like a corporate-owned, AI-run intranet at this point.

Real nerds probably won’t even use the internet in the future.

They’ll probably go outside and get super jacked and live in tree houses.

I can see it now. “The internet is for normies,” says the jacked nerd as he swings into the sunset. The rest of us will be stuck here, slowly going insane as we try to make sense of it all.

Stay positive in all of the madness.

I just finished watching “The Grinch,” the original, man, does that movie slap.