The video leverages a popular, anxiety-inducing cultural topic to establish the creator as a thoughtful commentator, driving viewers to her newsletter for deeper analysis.
Summary
The creator discusses the 'dead internet theory' and how the rise of AI-generated content is making the internet feel less human. She explores different ways people are responding to this shift, from leaving the internet to finding smaller, private communities.
Structure
1Introduction to the dead internet theory
2Evidence of bot traffic surpassing human traffic
3Examples of AI-generated content in daily life
4Clarification on the difference between AI slop and the dead internet
5Discussion of potential responses to the current state of the internet
6
Original caption
Are we entering the “Afterlife Era” of the internet? #deadinternettheory #aibots #socialmediastrategy #deadinternet #conspiracytheory
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Product placement
The video content serves as a high-level, intellectual hook for the creator's Substack newsletter, 'Scroll Sick', which is linked in her bio.
On-screen text
the dead internet theory is now a reality
Do you wanna be online if everyone else there is a bot?
Dead Internet theory
Dead internet theory becomes measurable fact as AI agents flood the web
Dead media, dead internet and the road back to humanity
Reddit Co-Founder says "Much Of The Internet Is Dead", Blames Bots and 'Quasi-AI'
Is the 'dead internet' theory coming true? New Stanford research calculates exactly how far we are—and it's alarming
Why the Internet Feels So Strange Lately
What to Know About the 'Dead Internet' Theory—and Why It's Spreading
Viral video of trampoline hopping bunnies of course wasn't real
A Computer Wrote My Mother's Obituary
Even the photos of the shit people are trying to pawn off on Facebook Marketplace are souped up by AI
AI slop and The dead internet aren't the same thing
Let's call them the touch grassers
The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet
We Need to Rewild The Internet
Transcript
Do you wanna be online if everyone else there is a bot? Sometime in the last decade, a conspiratorial theory emerged that the internet would soon be overrun with non-human entities. The aptly named dead internet theory asserts that various types of bots, AI agents, and crawlers would at some point comprise the vast majority of online interactions, forcing humans into the role of spectator or escapee. But last month we officially crossed over into a more dead than alive internet, and the CEO of Cloudflare tweeted, well, that happened faster than I predicted, alongside a graph of online traffic showing steady bot activity over 50%. This obviously comes as no surprise to citizens of the internet who are picking up on the stench of death every day, because the feeds are fake, the fans are fake, the influencers are AI, CEOs are spitting out thought leader slop on LinkedIn, the bots are gabbing to each other in the comment threads, the books winning literary prizes are penned by LLMs, that Slack message from your boss probably wasn't written by them, the viral video of trampoline hopping bunnies of course wasn't real, and unfortunately that obituary that your family just published for your grandpa was written by AI. Even the photos of the shit people are trying to pawn off on Facebook Marketplace are souped up by AI. Now it's important to note a couple nuances. AI slop and the dead internet aren't the same thing, though the former definitely accelerates the latter. And routine cruller bots have existed on the internet for decades. That's it. Neither of these is an explanation for the palpable deterioration of online spaces into a less lifelike version of themselves. The question is, where do we go from here in this afterlife era? And there are many camps. At one extreme, people feel so exasperated that they wanna leave entirely. Let's call them the touch grassers. Then there are the cozy web folk who are flocking to semi private spaces, as per Yancy Strickler's fascinating Dark Forest theory. And finally, tech activists who feel we need to decentralize and rewild the internet. I'm willing to hold on and maybe that makes me a kind of slop optimist of sorts. But I see the internet as an important ecosystem worth preserving. And I think our goal here should be ecological resilience, which is defined as the capacity of an ecosystem to respond to disturbance by resisting damage and subsequently recovering.
