I know it is the height of irony (or maybe hypocrisy) that I am using an AI summary of dead internet theory…
I have heard people discussing dead internet theory for a long time, but I always believed that the human element would rise above the bots, the trolls, the misinformation, the manufactured content. I am becoming less and less sure of that for each day that passes. I am so sick of fake news, influencers, scammers, bot posts, ragebait, karma farming, misinformation, disinformation, trolling, the constant commodification of everything that was good about the internet (news, advice, discussion). Maybe one day soon the internet will just be bots arguing with each other.
Some fake news I have read about Sweden this week – there are six hour workdays (nope), machines feed crows in the centre of Stockholm (nope), Swedish schools have switched back to exercise books and handwriting (nope), beeswax coated poles in winter save animals (nope). If you report this to Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok, nothing is ever done. The bot accounts or trolls just keep going.
I recently read about the intention economy (where you seek out and choose what you want to read or listen to) and the attention economy (where you are being served from an ad revenue model. Medium magazine has a great article on it here
Having read about AI models running amok lately, I wonder what the digital future will look like for us?
