Welcome to my Conspiracy Theory Series, where I break down a new conspiracy theory each month. This first post is a startlingly scary one: the Dead Internet Theory.
What is Dead Internet Theory?
AI-generated content and bots make up a startlingly large percentage of the content we view online. Dead Internet Theory essentially claims that humans have lost control of the direction of the internet because most of what we see online is bot-generated.
Believers of this theory think that the majority of meaningful human interaction that occurs online has been smothered by the sheer amount of fake material. This changes our social media platforms from something to connect with to something that is used mostly to advertise products and ideas.
The theory, originally starting in the early 2010s, has now evolved with the introduction of ChatGPT and OpenAI. It goes beyond just the AI-generated content and delves into the real human interaction that happens on social platforms. Dead Internet Theory claims that most of the comments, likes, tweets, and rants are mostly from chatbots that have nothing to do with the original post, hence creating the dead internet.
We’re drowning in an empty, addictive void of nothingness and meaninglessness because we’re only interacting with machines that feed us more of what we want as we consume mindlessly. Or, that’s what the theory says anyway.
Observations that Back the Behind Dead Internet Theory
Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I often fall into the trap of doomscroll. But I wouldn’t say I waste my time entirely, because there are a few things I’ve noticed about the content that I’ve been scrolling through, and I’m sure you do as well.
- Comments that claim the creator has forgotten to “buy comments/likes”
- A completely disbalanced number of comments and likes
- An overwhelming amount of AI slop – more on this later, but think internet trend concepts generated by AI, like the brief Italian AI trend of “Tung Tung Sahur” or the Sad Cat Songs
- Comments that include seemingly unrelated material to the post
- AI Voiceover – there’s so many creators that use AI voiceovers that we’ve learned to associate certain tones and voices with scrolling.
- Reposts. So many reposts.
- AI in the captions: notice all those em-dashes? The emoji bullet points? That’s not always human.
- AI errors in product titles.
Furthermore, many people have observed that after posting, their feed and the responses to their posts are needlessly irrelevant and clogged with AI and chatbot responses.
Evidence Against the Dead Internet Theory
We’re not yet drowning in a mindless void. Most of the posts that go viral are still from extremist views or exaggerated reactions. Unhinged comments and audios are still mostly made by humans, mostly since AI doesn’t understand human behaviour and internet culture quite yet. Social media platforms and large websites have large efforts to delete and remove bots and “inorganic” activity.
The raw experiences, many of the funny cat videos, and most of the stories that are shared are still human. However, the Dead Internet Theory is still a chilling idea because it’s not altogether untrue. There is a lot more AI and bot-generated content circling on the Internet than there was even five years ago during COVID.
The Dead Internet Theory does what many good conspiracy theories do: it takes an existing fearful experience and magnifies it to a depressing and unfortunate scale. But let’s keep in mind that this experience had to exist for it to truly be magnified this much.
TL;DR
A lot of interaction on the internet is generated by bots, which has led many to believe that the Internet is essentially “dead” and devoid of meaningful interaction. This has been magnified by the introduction of AI and bots. However, it’s important to remember its inability to understand contextual cues and internet culture limits bots from truly imitating human behaviour, so the Dead Internet Theory is not altogether true. It is true that there’s a lot more internet slop and meaningless generated content, though, and if we want to avoid creating a real Dead Internet, maybe we should take this as a sign to consume information with more intention.
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