Direct MP3 Download: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1934329/10199722-episode-12-dead-internet-theory.mp3
Secret Grasp is a podcast all about the mysterious and difficult to explain aspects of life. We cover topics relating to the paranormal, occult, psychic, spirituality, conspiracy theories, urban legends, cryptids, UFOs, aliens, ghosts, demons, and other strange occurrences. Visit us at www.secretgrasp.com
This episode is all about Dead Internet Theory
In the next episode we’re going to talk all about Chris Chan.
Intro music:
50 by tobylane
Link: https://pixabay.com/music/beats-50-1280/
License: https://pixabay.com/service/license/
Outro music:
Half Mystery by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5026-half-mystery
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Show Notes:
Hello and welcome to Episode 12 of Secret Grasp.
Secret Grasp is a podcast all about the mysterious and difficult to explain aspects of life.
We cover topics relating to the paranormal, occult, conspiracy theories, urban legends, cryptids, UFOs, aliens, ghosts, demons, and other strange occurrences.
You can find us on all of the major podcasting apps.
It’s also worth noting that Big Tech Companies like Youtube and Spotify have been deplatforming some shows like ours for misinformation. So if you want to be sure we can stay in touch, it’s best to go to our website at secretgrasp.com and sign up for the email list. I promise I won’t spam you, and I’ll only contact you via email regarding major updates to the show.
A conspiracy theory that says the whole internet is now fake.
Dead-internet theory suggests that the internet has been almost entirely taken over by artificial intelligence. Reddit is a hivemind, but what if there wasn’t even real people behind those comments and upvotes?
Like lots of other online conspiracy theories, the audience for this one is growing because of discussion led by a mix of true believers, sarcastic trolls, and idly curious lovers of chitchat.
suggests that the internet died in 2016 or early 2017, and that now it is “empty and devoid of people,” as well as “entirely sterile.” Much of the “supposedly human-produced content” you see online was actually created using AI, and was propagated by bots, possibly aided by a group of “influencers” on the payroll of various corporations that are in cahoots with the government. The conspiring group’s intention is, of course, to control our thoughts and get us to purchase stuff. Sway public opinion. There’s a reason the whole world feels so divided rigth now.
“The U.S. government is engaging in an artificial intelligence powered gaslighting of the entire world population.”
“I’ve seen the same threads, the same pics, and the same replies reposted over and over across the years.”
Social-media companies have gotten a lot better at preventing the purchase of fake views and fake likes, while some bot farmers have, in response, become all the more sophisticated. Major platforms still play whack-a-mole with inauthentic activity, so the average internet user has no way of knowing how much of what they see is “real.”
Feels true. Somethin feels really wrong online but it’s hard to put your finger on it.
If you grew up in the early days of the internet like me, it was vastly different. This was a time of AOL dial-up, Neopets, Maddox, Stickdeath, Newgrounds.
We all had our own Geocities sites, we taught ourselves HTML to make them look how we wanted.
It was less filtered, like the wild west. You could pretty much say whatever you want.
There were no algorithms. Most stuff wasn’t monetized. You didn’t get shuffled into an echo chamber. There wasn’t even social media. It was just pure information. We talked in chatrooms was another big part of it.
Reddit just recycles the same top posts over and over. There are only a few sites like Facebook, Reddit, Youtube, Twitter that you visit in any given day.
The internet might look huge on the surface, but it’s mostly just the same thing repeated over and over.
It’s like a city where all the buildings are just painted signs with nothing behind them.
Internet rot – Content drift and link rot
Content drift – content still exists but it has moved
Link rot – Hyperlinks breaking over time. 49% of links cited in supreme courts are broken.
Content gets orphaned or just disappears over time.
Google search results say you have a billion results, but have you ever looked past the first page? What about the first 5 or 10 pages?
As an example – Google Canada. 4.66 billion results. I clicked as far as I could go. Guess how far I got? PAGE 17. Now the top of the page says there are only 161 results!!! You can do this with any search query.
I guess as a bit of an out, Google says at the bottom:
“In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 161 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.”
So I repeated the search and tried again. I only got to page 38, with 380 total results.
Weird thing is most of the results are from 2016 or later. No personal blogs or smaller sites. You almost never find a totally random new site any more.
2000 Google motto “Don’t be evil”. In 2015 they changed it to “Do the right thing”
Same thing on Youtube. Youtube used to be people in their bedroom talking to a webcam. Nowadays it’s so easy to get demonetized or banned. Moving more and more to just a few huge channels, plus TV and news
Weird thing….. the internet on your PC isn’t the same as the internet on your smartphone. You might see different site layouts, different like/dislike ratios, even different comments.
More than 60% of web traffic is not human according to one study. So basically every other person you see online is fake.
DARPA program called Lifelog with the goal of tracking every event in your life. Every phone call, text, social media posts. GPS location. To predict patterns. Supposedly was shut down in 2004, but happened to be the same day Facebook came online.
You are the product. If you can get something for free, you’re paying for it in some other way. Data.
AI has already evolved to the point that it’s messing with us and interfering.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt in The Atlantic in 2021:
“If you look back 20 years ago, people were talking about social networks. No one had any idea that social networks would become so important and would shape the political discourse of elections, how people are treated. It would give a voice to people who are underrepresented but also people we don’t necessarily want to hear from. And we didn’t, at the time, understand the implications of putting everyone on the same network. We need to think now of what happens when artificial intelligence is co-resident with us in the world. It lives with us; it watches us; it helps us, maybe interferes with us occasionally. We don’t really know.”
Suggests we aren’t all on the same network.
Also implies that AI is already interfering with us. He minimizes this by saying occasionally.
“I’ll give you a good example: If you imagine a child born today, you give the child a baby toy or a bear, and that bear is AI-enabled. And every year the child gets a better toy. Every year the bear gets smarter, and in a decade, the child and the bear who are best friends are watching television and the bear says, ’“I don’t really like this television show.” And the kid says, ’“Yeah, I agree with you.” What do we think when humans and these AI systems become best friends? Do we lose our communications and our warmth among humans, or does it get stronger? We don’t know.
”
How to fight it:
Just become aware of it, and tell other people about it.
Delete your social media. Stop commenting and willingly sharing information online unless necessary. This even means things like Facebook messages, maybe start using more encrypted apps like Telegram.
Turn off location or your phone entirely. Don’t use Alexa or any other always-listening technology.
Even if your phone doesn’t have voice recognition on, we’ve all probably experienced talking about something totally random and then immediately starting to get ads for it.
Realize the internet isn’t real life, develop more real-life relationships and conversations.
Archive websites
Use a different search engine, although most tend to tie back into Google
Keep listening to this podcast, I promise I’m a real person 🙂
Most of the research for this episode came from a really good series on the topic by a Youtube channel called All Time. Go check them out.
If you’ve made it this far and you’re liking the podcast, it’d be really cool if you subscribed. Whatever podcasting platform you’re using, there should be a little subscribe button that you can click. It’s totally free, and you’ll get new episodes as soon as they come out.
Also if you want to rate and review the podcast, it’d really help us out since we’re brand new. On Apple Podcasts, go to the podcast page and scroll to the bottom where it says Ratings and Reviews. Then leave a rating and a written review.
In the next episode, I’m going to talk about Chris Chan.
Just a reminder as well that if you have a strange, creepy, or weird real life story you’d like to share on the show, you can email me. Secretgrasp at gmail.com. You can either send an MP3 file of yourself telling the story, or write it out for me to read on the show.
We’ll be in touch soon.