“Dead internet theory,” referenced in this recent Fast Company piece by Michael Grothaus, is a catchall phrase for the preponderance of bots and generative content on platforms, or for the idea that “everything online is fake.” As Grothaus explains the theory,
its main argument is that the organic, human-created content that powered the early web in the 1990s and 2000s has been usurped by artificially created content, which now dominates what people see online. Hence, the internet is “dead” because the content most of us consume is no longer created by living beings (humans).
And here I thought it was because you had to be dead inside to want to use it.
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