Dead Internet Theory

Four years ago, on the fringes of the message-board internet, many started to argue that no, most users on Facebook and other social media platforms were AI bots. In fact, the internet made by real human beings had died back in 2016 or 2017. In a widely read article in The Atlantic, this idea was called a “conspiracy theory” that was probably “wrong” but “feels true”.

Then, at the end of December 2024, Meta told the Financial Times that was, er, the plan for the future:

Meta is betting that characters generated by artificial intelligence will fill its social media platforms in the next few years as it looks to the fast-developing technology to drive engagement with its 3 billion users. The Silicon Valley group is rolling out a range of AI products, including one that helps users create AI characters on Instagram and Facebook, as it battles with rival tech groups to attract and retain a younger audience. 

We expect these AIs to actually, over time, exist on our platforms, kind of in the same way that accounts do,” said Connor Hayes, vice-president of product for generative AI at Meta. “They’ll have bios and profile pictures and be able to generate and share content powered by AI on the platform . . . that’s where we see all of this going,” he added. Hayes said a “priority” for Meta over the next two years was to make its apps “more entertaining and engaging”, which included considering how to make the interaction with AI more social. 

The admission went viral. Sleuths discovered what they believed to be these new AI users, only to realise that they had been created by Meta over a year ago. One was “Liv,” a supposed “proud Black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller.” Her Instagram profile was filled with her non-existent children, whose number and appearance differed in each AI-generated image. Alarmed by the backlash, Meta pivoted, and claimed their hopes for AI profiles was just some speculative dream for the future.

This has been the direction of travel for some time. We first covered it in 2013 and again in 2017 when Lil Miquela first appeared. Real humans have been posting less and less, turning the “scroll” into a passive medium populated by so-called “creators” (many of who will be, or already are, AI generated). 

“Engagement” data has long been manipulated by fake clicks and reads to boost advertising revenues. The question of just how much any of this is “real” is a looming one, and for Meta, certainly an existential one. They cannot monetise “connection” if nobody wants to connect.

The consequences, to my mind, may in fact be far, far weirder than the juicing of ad metrics. Building on our previous Sentient Memes seed, Dead Internet Theory arose from the numerous reports that the profiles of dead friends and relatives were being hacked and hijacked by bots - many of them porn bots posting “░M░Y░P░U░S░S░Y░I░N░B░I░O░” or AI-generated images of shrimp Jesus. This is the uncanny valley, a mishmash of duelling algorithms and content strategies.

I have my own personal conspiracy theory. That we are living in a simulation, and that simulation is the Dead Internet an alien civilisation has long abandoned and forgotten to switch off. We’re bots in a photo-realistic Facebook Minecraft app that once belonged to real beings. As our own virtual world edges towards this reality, is it that farfetched to suppose another intelligent civilisation has not already arrived at that destination? And we are living in it? 

Further Reading/Viewing

• Google’s AI Slop Invasion Feels Like the Beginning of the End

“AI learns from its surroundings, and as AI-generated content continues to seep into the internet, it'll likely fall into a self-cannibalising loop. The best we can do is be vigilant of AI misinformation and continue to raise awareness when it threatens human creativity.”

• The Ghosts In the Machine: Spotify’s Plot Against Musicians

“A model in which the imperative is simply to keep listeners around, whether they’re paying attention or not, distorts our very understanding of music’s purpose. This treatment of music as nothing but background sounds – as interchangeable tracks of generic, vibe-tagged playlist fodder – is at the heart of how music has been devalued in the streaming era. It is in the financial interest of streaming services to discourage a critical audio culture among users, to continue eroding connections between artists and listeners, so as to more easily slip discounted stock music through the cracks, improving their profit margins in the process. It’s not hard to imagine a future in which the continued fraying of these connections erodes the role of the artist altogether, laying the groundwork for users to accept music made using generative-AI software.”

• The Rise of Casual/Passive Content

Dead Internet Theory is in some ways linked to the rise of casual or “passive content” consumption, which has become increasingly prevalent with the rise of AI bots online. As outlined in the essay above about Spotify, the platform’s internal research revealed that many users were not seeking out specific artists or albums but were using it as a background soundtrack to their lives – whether that meant a study playlist or dinner music. In this kind of listening environment, which streaming services have helped cultivate, listeners often don’t bother paying attention to the artists or songs playing.

This shift mirrors broader trends online, where passive engagement with content – often algorithmically curated – has led to a landscape where much of the content consumed is not actively sought but passively absorbed. In the context of Dead Internet Theory, this trend is especially noticeable as more of the online content we interact with is not created by people but generated by AI bots, designed to fill our attention spans with easily consumable, automated material. The intersection of AI-generated content and passive content consumption creates an ecosystem where much of the internet feels increasingly artificial and devoid of authentic human interaction.

• Casual Viewing: Why Netflix Looks Like That

Netflix is also prioritising casual/passive content moving forwards, as mentioned in the n+1 article, Casual Viewing, quoted from here:

“One tag among Netflix’s thirty-six thousand microgenres offers a suitable name for this kind of dreck: ‘casual viewing’. Usually reserved for breezy network sitcoms, reality television and nature documentaries, the category describes much of Netflix’s film catalog — movies that go down best when you’re not paying attention, or as the Hollywood Reporter recently described Atlas, a 2024 sci-fi film starring Jennifer Lopez, ‘another Netflix movie made to half-watch while doing laundry . A high-gloss product that dissolves into air... It doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad, if a user is on their phone or cleaning their room. What matters is that it’s on, and that it stays on until Netflix asks its perennial question, a prompt that appears when the platform thinks a user has fallen asleep: ‘Are you still watching? ”

• Belmond’s New Slow TV series ‘Long Shots’

Lots of other brands have recently been jumping on the passive viewing bandwagon. Last week, for example, the luxury hotel group Belmond launched a YouTube series with the following description:

“Welcome to Belmond’s new slow TV series ‘Long Shots’ – ultra longform films designed for passive viewing and active dreaming... Play in the background while you work or nap.”