Quoted By:
The Dead Internet Theory is the belief that the vast majority of internet traffic, posts and users have been replaced by bots and AI-generated content, and that people no longer shape the direction of the internet.
The theory was floating around 4Chan in the late 2010s, but it was solidified and amplified in 2021 after a lengthy post describing the theory was posted on a thread titled "Dead Internet Theory: Most Of The Internet Is Fake," on the forum Agora Road's Macintosh Cafe.
Writing about the theory for The Atlantic, Kaitlyn Tiffany described the post as the “ur-text,” setting the shape of the theory to come. Tiffany even managed to contact the original poster, a Californian man who claimed to earnestly believe the words he wrote.
His post describes a sense of unease, paranoia and loneliness, expressing deep disappointment at the state of the modern internet. He suggests that AI has successfully drowned out the majority of online human activity, reshaping the internet into a more controlled, algorithmic form that exists only to sell products and ideas.
