dead internet theory

james choice · 2026-05-06T12:55:57.938181-07:00

the internet is genuinely dying. the reason, as discussed here, is primarily the search engines. people have stopped producing because they can no longer get their pages noticed. social media platforms are no different. when you search on youtube, it shows 5-10 relevant results and then completely unrelated stuff. same on x. many platforms work the same way. this is why a lot of people who actually produce quality content eventually give up. they can't get to where they want to go. there are tons of youtube channels where they've stopped making videos. this is exactly the kind of example i was talking about, the internet dying directly, separate from bots and so on. ai is just the icing on the cake. ais come with biases on every topic. so you can never search for the opposite side of an issue. for example, i search "y is actually harmless" on yandex. the ai immediately says "y is actually beneficial. no." did i fucking ask you, i say, but it just keeps arguing with me. the search results are no different. i just want to hear the opposing view on that subject. the results insistently come back saying it's beneficial, and it never lets me search clearly. all search engines are the same. the youtube search section is the same. and then these sons of bitches set traps just to get us to accidentally click on ads. for example, when you're scrolling reels on instagram, everything's working fine, but the moment an ad pops up, suddenly it stops scrolling. makes you click by accident. like, my eyes automatically filter out ads. so these sons of bitches make ads on x look like regular people's tweets. or they change ad formats to throw off your visual habits. figured i'd vent while i was at it.

probably half of what you see on the internet, maybe even most of it… isn't real.

according to the theory, the internet effectively "died" after 2016. the vast majority of the content you see is produced by bots, ais, and corporate/state operations. the things real people write are either made invisible or drowned out by algorithms.

think about it:
– the same template comments are constantly recycled on twitter/x, instagram, tiktok, etc.
– news sites are exact copies of each other, same headlines, same sentences.
– forums and blogs have collapsed; independent content is almost nonexistent.
– posts from small accounts don't reach anyone, while big accounts and sponsored content are pushed to the front.
– the debates circulating on social media feel like they're part of a pre-written script.

who's behind all this? according to the theory, big tech companies (meta, google, x, etc.) and governments are working hand in hand. the goal is clear: shaping public opinion, psychological operations, and creating an artificial ecosystem driven entirely by money.

you might say "you're exaggerating," but no one knows the exact ratio of bot accounts. some say 15-20%, others say 70%. on top of that, chatgpt and its derivatives came out and turned the internet into an ai dumpster. it's now become impossible to tell which content is produced by an actual human.

personally, there's a massive gulf between the internet of the early 2010s and the internet today. people used to produce; today, algorithms and bots pump out content. is the internet still alive, or is it dead? in my opinion, it's pretty much become a zombie.