It’s hard to believe that I have been running this site for 10 years. Maybe a bit longer. In this time I’ve seen bloggers come and go, the rules of being online changed a million times, and apparently the internet died. Welcome to the Dead Internet Theory! Which is interesting as I am very much alive.
What is the Dead Internet Theory?
Let’s start this off with what the Dead Internet Theory is. In a nutshell- the internet died in 2016-2017 and most of the traffic we see on websites and social media are bots. These bots target certain ideas to boost algorithms and bring certain content to the front of the internet. For example; a few years ago I made a post about being a 1950’s housewife for the week. Now, let’s pretend that certain groups would prefer if women went back to the 1950’s and became subservient homemakers, they would want content that glamourised this role at the front page of the internet in order to influence women to take this role again. So, the bots attack and that post gets shoved to the front of Google, women around the world read it (along with a heap of other content that makes them believe that this is the way), and my website gets loads of views. Sounds good to me (more views = more money) but what if I wasn’t real? What if this site was AI content with an agenda? What if most of the internet is not what it seems?
The Rise of AI
I’m not going to lie; it has been hard being a blogger over the last few years. AI is powering most of the written content on the internet, churning out blog posts and articles at a rate that a human can’t manage. Don’t get me wrong, I love AI but I want it to clean my house and do my laundry, not create poetry and art. I’m not even a fan of digital art. I want paint and brush strokes, fingerprints and smudges. I don’t want to read posts that have been passed through ChatGPT or whatever thingy everyone is using to create content. The beautiful thing about blogs is the humans behind them. Was that hoover all it was cracked up to be? How are people decorating their tables this Christmas? I’m sorry, your kid done what on the first day of school? The human experience is muddy, colourful, and beautifully chaotic. These threads of existence shouldn’t be fed into AI to create a perfect story. They need to be woven by us to create a tapestry of our time on Earth.
My blog is alive
Despite everything that has happened over the last few years, I refuse to give up on my dreams of writing. Mainly because it pays my bills. However, I could easily start throwing out 10-20 blog posts a day by generating content through AI in order to boost traffic and make a fortune. But I won’t. I did try and boost readership recently by posting some Reddit stories on here. I won’t be doing that again because I can’t be arsed. It was boring doing the whole “copy and paste” thing when you can easily take yourself over to Reddit and read the posts on there (plus the comments which are always gold). Will I delete them? No, again, because I can’t be arsed. There are too many sections on my site and I post content depending on what I am doing. Decorating the house? House goals is getting filled up with posts. Going on holiday? That’s why the travel section gets updated once a year. My dumbass is trying out a new beauty hack? Welcome to the beauty section for lazy bitches (or Type A bitches who don’t have time to spend 45 minutes contouring their face). My point is, I am a writer and I will always write. Maybe it will be a short story in my head, a blog post that I post when I can be bothered, or a full length novel complete with soundtrack and what actors I would like to play the roles of my creations. But I won’t start using AI to create blog posts for the sake of creating content.
Is anyone else out there?
If the Dead Internet Theory is true and most of the sites and socials are AI bots, are there any humans left out there? How many people are clicking on to a site, believing that they are reading the experience of a real person, and it’s all fake? More importantly, is this what we want? If I was given the option of 100 real people clicking this post and making a connection with them, or 100,000,000,000,000 (< I don’t know what that number actually is but it looks cool) bots came along everyday and I made a heap of money, which would I choose? Ummm…. errr…. what are the chances that 100 people would be mixed in with those millions of bot views?
We may never know if the internet is really dead. What I do know is that I am alive, I’m not a robot, and I plan on keeping my little corner of the internet around for as long as I can. The internet might be dying but it’s not dead yet. At least not while I’m around.