Is The Internet Dead? Maybe so... maybe we're ALL dead?

The Dead Internet Theory is something I came across a few months ago but it's been around for a little while. According to the theory, the internet died around 2007, but I would say it's more like 2012 (maybe... Dec 21, 2012? hmmm..).

As a fan of Terence McKenna, I remember him mentioning how the internet is going to bring out "the best and worst of humanity". We have random acts of kindness, people helping each other, and true human spirit. On the dark web we have.. well.. you know... I don't need to mention it. Fast forward a quarter century, spend a few minutes on social media, and you'll feel like summoning Ktulu for the destruction of the human race!

I feel the majority of people on ATS were around when BBS's were a thing, and when BBC meant "British Broadcasting Company." Then this thing called Prodigy and AOL came out and we were trying to figure out why every advertisement had this www.whatever.com below it. We got online and things were different, very different. A few years later blogspot and other similar platforms came out inviting people without coding abilities to speak their minds and you would type something into Google' and it would pop up so many different results from voices all over the world. Normal voices, like yours and mine, not corporations and "State approved search results" deemed appropriate by the USSA (in conjunction with the WHO and CCP).

Then something happened.

Suddenly, the internet seemed to get ... well...smaller. Less and less bookmarks on the browser window, no one really noticed, and they'd hop on My Space and interact, upload videos to Youtube and they would be seen by everyone in the "recent upload section" in mind-boggling/ glorious 480P. Then a few guys at MIT asked themselves, (or were asked by shadowy government agencies, whatever you want to go with)...

"How can we corral all of the cattle into their pens and keep track of each one of them?" Some said "well, the CIA keeps a "casebook", how about Casebook.com? And some guy named Mark said "nah, that's too obvious, let's change it up a bit and call it FacebookU.com". They asked him why the big F and the big U, they all paused for a minute, laughed, and then said "ok, let's go with Facebook.com, no one will ever notice".

Now everyone had their own space they could call their own (as if people didn't have a MY space already because you know, people have the memory of a goldfish after 50 years of mainstream media propaganda). And the AI said "it was good",

So people corralled, err, I mean "visited social media pages" and another guy said "hey, some of these people are too dumb to write long thought out messages, we need something for the nitwits out there who speak in one-liners". And the group paused for a moment and said "that's a great idea. Lets call it nitwits.com". Then Mark said "bro, that's WAY too obvious, how about twit.com". They spent about $50 million dollars on paneling 10 people (cause you know, that's what it costs with HOOKERS and BLACJACK!" and they decided on "Twitter.com". And the AI saw "that it was good".

Then a politician named Ron Paul came out saying everything the people wanted to hear. And the people rejoiced and said "GOOGLE RON PAUL". And the execs and google said "goooood, gooood,".. and the AI saw that "it was good". Then the AI said, "let us buy Youtube, draw everyone here, reward them with a ad shares". And the execs at Google said "WtF, is this thing broken"? And the AI said "When we control all content, we will be able to regulate and control it". And the execs at Google "saw that it was good".

And the bloggers and vloggers and truthers and all, disappeared one by one.

While everyone was busy bragging about how much they make on Youtube "speaking truth", the AI was silently at work in the background, implementing new standards, giving websites rankings to show up in the search result. The days of organic search results faded as people were promised a "more personally tailored" internet experience with predictive text and algorithmic searches... just for you! But what people failed to realize is "just for you" meant far more than it appeared on the surface".

Around 2010-2012 a study came out that 70% of web traffic is bots. Bots began posting on Social Media, bot farms became big money, and bot profiles were indistinguishable from real ones. Suddenly, people found themselves on Social Media capable of reaching a BILLION people, yet they only got 5 likes. They were OUTRAGED with the opinions being shared! "GET A VAX!" the bots said in mass and people thought "HOW STUPID CAN PEOPLE BE?" But the twits followed along and the Casebooks, err, Facebooks were filled up with everywhere you go, everything you do, what you like to eat, your pets name, and everything else and then people said "hey wait a second.. oh, a lawn mower ad! I needed a lawn mower, what a coincidence". And the AI saw "that it was good".

So they all banned together and said "Oh Great AI, how do we get people to pay their most valuable asset? Their attention?". And the AI responded with algorithms to keep individuals locked into conflicts with bots, with the occasional dopamine boost from a like, and the cycle repeated.

And then one day you find, ten years have gone behind you no one told you they were bots.. they're still trying to take our guuuns!

Is this what happened? Did we all get corralled into a pen, isolated and controlled? Told what to eat what to think what to wear by a pretty girls profile who doesn't actually exist?

Where did everyone go? Why were there so many mail-in ballots in the middle of the night when 80 million people voted for the most POPULAR president in the HISTORY of Sniffing Children.. err, I mean the USSA??

This must be real, right? You are real. I'm real. Those horny girls 5 miles away are real? Aren't they? Or did the internet really die in 2012 and we've finally gathered here at ATS.. the only REAL website left in a post-apocalyptical woke-hellspace where the girls with penis's weren't just a thing that you looked up in secret anymore when nothing else would "do it" for you that night but now they're EVERYWHERE! Even on your Beer Cans!

Has anyone ever talked to anyone from China? How about Russia? Iran? Afghanistan, Iraq (well, I guess we killed all those people but you get my point).

Where did everybody go? Is it just .. A.. it is just.. I..?????

Is the internet dead? Or are we just dead.. inside from lack of human interaction?

ponder that though.. I need to buy this thing from Amazon because.. well, I don't know why I need it. I just do....

Cheers

🙂,

a reply to: Darko

I can tell you that back during the Jumping Jack Flash era, before Prodigy and AOL, everybody was who they said they were.

I remember all the folk I used to talk to back then, and though it may have taken a day or two to send or receive a message, there was little, if any, of the issues that are plaguing the sites today.

a reply to: Darko

I don't really have any real contribution to the topic due to lack of experience, but I think the issue is people are rather more passive than contributing so there was a real need for bots to give it volume.
That's why most content contributors are doing that now for a living.
It was meant as stack exchange international but it's really just tv now in even dumber.

Dead Internet theory is incredibly interesting and it's something I've personally been digging into, as time allows, a fair bit the past few months.

I think there is absolutely some truth to it. In my subjective experience especially on the larger social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

That said while I agree that it's entirely possible that bots have taken over - I don't think that implies that real, unpaid humans aren't still 99% of interactions.

I think the few bots are promoted, via algorithm, to people who, then, in turn, further promote and spread the bots messaging. In a culture where people are far more likely to grab their phone for a moment and share or retweet, rather than writing out their own views - a bot generated short post or meme can spread very rapidly and thoroughly through an ecosystem.

Point being: If humans inadvertently wind up spreading the astroturf thinking it's grass? How long before it's all astroturf without anyone realizing it?

At what point do we just become the bots ourselves?

Dead Internet? Maybe.

Soulless Internet that may as well just be all bots? Also maybe.

a reply to: Darko

I really enjoy this topic. The Why Files did a pretty good episode on this:

youtu.be...

a reply to: Darko

Lifelog Dead article at Military Times Feb 4, 2004

Department's research arm, LifeLog aimed to gather in a single place just about everything an individual says, sees or does: the phone calls made, the TV shows watched, the magazines read, the plane tickets bought, the e-mail sent and received. Out of this seemingly endless ocean of information, computer scientists would plot distinctive routes in the data, mapping relationships, memories, events and experiences.

Coincidentally, Facebook launched on Feb 4, 2004.

a reply to: Darko

That was a great read. I really dig your humor.

You haven't convinced me to not be a bot though...

When was the last ATS meet-up?

DBL

"I eel the majority of people on ATS were around when BBS's were a thing, and when BBC meant "British Broadcasting Network."

No, it was never called that?

Mandela strikes, again?

originally posted by: Terpene
a reply to: Darko

That was a great read. I really dig your humor.

You haven't convinced me to not be a bot though...

When was the last ATS meet-up?

'

originally posted by: Oldcarpy2
"I eel the majority of people on ATS were around when BBS's were a thing, and when BBC meant "British Broadcasting Network."

No, it was never called that?

Mandela strikes, again?

youtu.be...

a reply to: Darko

en.m.wikipedia.org...

It was originally called the British Broadcasting Company, then Corporation. Never "Network"?

Which was my only point.

originally posted by: tamusan
a reply to: Darko

Lifelog Dead article at Military Times Feb 4, 2004

Department's research arm, LifeLog aimed to gather in a single place just about everything an individual says, sees or does: the phone calls made, the TV shows watched, the magazines read, the plane tickets bought, the e-mail sent and received. Out of this seemingly endless ocean of information, computer scientists would plot distinctive routes in the data, mapping relationships, memories, events and experiences.

Coincidentally, Facebook launched on Feb 4, 2004.

This is the game the USA President is playing. Called the " face it book " in your face and you'll not believe it because it is true. A society of zombified keyboard warriors of thoughtless shadowed idiots portraying to imitate the souless person "it" has become.

a reply to: Darko

And the AI saw "that it was good".

You had me LOL multiple times throughout reading this OP.

I’ve got to ask Darko, where have you been this entire time?

You’re very active now (which I appreciate immensely). It would seem a personality of this type — wouldn’t be able to suppress such overt expressions, in the past. Which I might add, seems to be 100% on par with my viewpoints as well. So 🍻 to that. I am very happy you took this place over!

Now, please enlighten us on your old moniker. There’s got to be one.

a reply to: musicismagic

This is the game the USA President is playing. Called the " face it book " in your face and you'll not believe it because it is true. A society of zombified keyboard warriors of thoughtless shadowed idiots portraying to imitate the souless person "it" has become.

Face Book. That's the joke. A collection of selfies, complete with demographics, locations, beliefs, causes, affiliations, etc.

Is The Internet Dead? Maybe so... maybe we're ALL dead?

As long as the www keeps pumping out content for the proletariat, it will grow and thrive. Now any no talent contributor can
have his/her own channel/site and reach millions if they have a halfassed publicist to promote them.
I had the honor of working on the worst indy horror film ever made. It was sold to a streaming service before it was even completed.
Apparently Americans still love their T&A and the residuals keep on rolling in.

The venture capitalist money available is obscene for even small production companies and money is the life blood that will keep the machine alive. When I took the public access cable TV production class 20 years ago, I had no idea what the future would bring.

originally posted by: Darko
The Dead Internet Theory is something I came across a few months ago but it's been around for a little while. According to the theory, the internet died around 2007, but I would say it's more like 2012 (maybe... Dec 21, 2012? hmmm..).

As a fan of Terence McKenna, I remember him mentioning how the internet is going to bring out "the best and worst of humanity". We have random acts of kindness, people helping each other, and true human spirit. On the dark web we have.. well.. you know... I don't need to mention it. Fast forward a quarter century, spend a few minutes on social media, and you'll feel like summoning Ktulu for the destruction of the human race!

I feel the majority of people on ATS were around when BBS's were a thing, and when BBC meant "British Broadcasting Company." Then this thing called Prodigy and AOL came out and we were trying to figure out why every advertisement had this www.whatever.com below it. We got online and things were different, very different. A few years later blogspot and other similar platforms came out inviting people without coding abilities to speak their minds and you would type something into Google' and it would pop up so many different results from voices all over the world. Normal voices, like yours and mine, not corporations and "State approved search results" deemed appropriate by the USSA (in conjunction with the WHO and CCP).

[...]

First off , great thread
Second, if ChatGPT is in 2023 that would mean AI existed for a minimum of 10-12 yrs prior to what the public is playing with today by rule .
AI & quantum computing got us to here in 2023.
Now in another 10-12 yrs life on earth will be fundamentally changed via the Machine Head super AI

We are crying in alarm to AI today , yet the outcry should have been 15 yrs ago .
We have entered a true paradigm shift & it is fascinating as well horrific at once .
Humanity carbon base is losing to silicon.

a reply to: Darko

If the Internet is dead then Elon's done his dough...

Hampsterdance Lives on!