Dead internet theory

[ChronoFiction]

I've been thinking about this for quite a few months now, and found out more about it. The dead internet theory isn't just about bots flooding the internet, but also stuff such as Google being a potemkin village where you would think there's billions of results of the thing you were searching for only to end up with hundreds of results or even thousands of results if you're lucky. Most of all the thing that sticks out to me about the dead internet is link rot, where links to websites just die out or get moved to elsewhere. I remember reading an article about link rot in which it states that 66.5% are dead ends. With AI being added to the mix I've ended being pessimistic about the future of the internet. Well what you all think about the future of the internet?

 

[MajesticSiN]

The internet is just the dream of the Fayth

 

[Cardboardtubeknight Cardboardtubeknight]

Ill be honest for a time I thought a rather egregious aspect was even occurring here, but I won't point out any names

 

[Segadude113]

we need alternate sites, that's all. Free to the public, by the people for the people. No monetization. No ads. No viruses. No bots. No trackers. No CEOs with stupid ideas making everything worse. No bitcoin. None of that crap. We need sites like neocities.

 

[Advil Lavs]

Well, wherever big companies fail, there are creative people to fix it. There are many projects which try to preserve old pages or bring more life to internet with personalised pages. The great thing about internet is that you can do literally anything in it, as long as you know HTML and one or two programming languages (or you steal from someone's page).

 

[Yousef]

It’s not a theory, the internet is actually dead. My buddy Eric killed it in a Black Ops II private lobby. Was a real strange evening.

 

[zacharinolongpants]

I think the garbage and bloat and dead links and AI and ads are here to stay. However, places like RGT give me hope and I think that underneath the digital ruins that is the modern web, you'll find a steadily growing wave of enthusiasts of different things making cool unique websites for those who go looking around. We may be going back to those days where you just have to know the URLs and spread them word of mouth for interesting and trustworthy places to go.

 

[Advil Lavs]

It’s not a theory, the internet is actually dead. My buddy Eric killed it in a Black Ops II private lobby. Was a real strange evening.

Damn, I didn't know you can go to the bottom of the ocean in Black Ops II and cut the cord

 

[iamthemilkman]

Ads everywhere, bots everywhere, AI "artwork" everywhere -- it truly is hell.

 

[Nebulon_Galaxy]

It’s not a theory, the internet is actually dead. My buddy Eric killed it in a Black Ops II private lobby. Was a real strange evening.

Did he used the Scorpion EVO or the AN94?

 

[ZEGA ZONIC]

The Wayback machine exists.
Sure that some of the internet is dead, but at least you can relive it.

 

[vulonkaaz's iconvulonkaaz]

apart from

the future of the internet is normidiots doomscrolling on phone apps that requires their ID cards and schizos doing the same as always on their janky custom softwares

not much of a difference compared to right now except that normie internet will be even less convenient to use for schizos resulting in some sort of segregation

 

[Sir Auriel of Lionel]

Well if old forums still have activity would it be easier to call it zombie internet theory, for how dead some place of the internet become there's still life.

 

[ThatOneLum ThatOneLum]

The internet is just the dream of the Fayth

GOATed response.

For real though, I can easily see the internet as we currently know it failing. After decades of very limited downtime, all of a sudden the past decade has seen numerous outage incidents with major servers.

Plus, thre's at least a partial possibility that we're going to see something akin to the dotcom bubble wth the way AI is being pushed right now. If all those data centres end up not being needed, there are gonna be a lot of people just completely in the hole in a big way.

Eventually, people might just reject the internet completely if things get bad enough, but the chances are that the big tech companies behind these sites/services will do everything they can to stop people leaving.

 

[Clippy]

Maybe the real Internet is the friends bots we made along the way.

 

[thecrow2313]

Maybe the real Internet is the friends bots we made along the way.
View attachment 106204

 

[KenaiPhoenix]

Sadly it is not a theory, at least for me.

Like a year ago, I was going through X and I saw one of those gimmick accounts in which the post was something like "Incredible stuff made some arab" and it was an interview with an arab speaking in a mouth play or something, the thing is: the audio was key for the video or it would only look like a guy moving its mouth on a TV show.

Now, the problem is that the bot that run the account made a mistake and uploaded the video without audio. Until then, nothing special, we all know that bots runs some accounts, the problem was that there where MANY comments and reposts of accounts saying this video was too funny or great. They even reply between themselves.

And the other aspect that you say, it is the problem of having such large hubs: Google, X, Reddit, Youtube or Discord. I would like to point at AI and say something, but I have tried to search information on Google and it is impossible. And sadly many people just went with the masses and are now in these ocean of people. And this killed small sites and communities.

On the plus side, there are people that just didnt want to roll with this and opposed this, I mean we are on a forum (And there are others places too). I might be wrong, but I dont think it would be that weird to see people returning to forums and small communities like this so they can escape the bots and all the issues related to mass social media hubs.

 

[prnzoDraGoonZweiOrta]

4D printers. we will clone custom internet configs n have them battle it out in our living rooms like the CPU Coliseum Cringeclash. then we will clone custom Earths until Gaia sends the Last Dinosaur to save the day (which will be a hit movie n an actual extinction-struggle at the same time). and our AI-powered cars will all drive to the beach n into the ocean. Leviathan Smith n Kraken Jones will be our new president/vice-emperor, respectively. Spongebob n Snorks reruns will get another revival.

ppl will be too lazy to swim n too broke to buy a boat n too vain to develop gills n too stupid to avoid barracuda backalleys in the Baltic. gravitational-magnetism of flippers n goggles n snorkels will take care of transportation n we will need immunity shots against barometric pressure shenanigans. eventually volcanic lava will merge with the ocean makin half of it into vaporous steam as we drown tryin to play each other n unlock achievements on the immortal survivor Steam.

Hell is right underneath the ocean floor n will give ironically-stipulated loans at an interest rate of (wut else) 66.6% so no wurries about presenting a middle-class octosquid a fake I.C.U. while you skip town. aquahaters throw salt-water in someone's game n drown. 'is water wet?' is a new line for undersea douchetoolers. bathroom duties uhhhh yeaaa complicated n unfortunate.

should be fun can't wait

wait how'd I get from future of the intaRRwebz to this? welp. that's a question for another life

 

[Vexicrypt]

Honestly, I don't have mental energy to care about all this anymore. If humanity wants to destroy everything that had any meaning to welcome new age of AI slop, so be it. Its gonna happen no matter what and I'm tired of people saying "everything sucks now". Yeah, it really does and it will get worse. The only thing each of us can do, however, is admiring real art made by actual humans. Be it music, drawings, videos, movies, you name it; reject AI generated crap and seek for real things no matter how hard it will be in the future. Anyway I had a beer and I'm probably rambling but you get the point.

 

[Redwall Muzyczka Redwall Muzyczka Redwall Muzyczka's icon]

It has been dying a slow, painful death ever-since social media took over... Seriously, look up anything and chances are that the top results are all someone's video on it, or an IG post, TikTok short, etc.

We used to be able to find what we were looking for so long as we were willing to dig for it, but nowadays the "shovel" hits an impassable rock two seconds in, and that's compounded by the fact that even the "secret stuff" (mostly shadow libraries) are common knowledge instead.

It's a sad state of affairs.

 

[Vardalis]

It'll continue to get worse before it gets better. I can agree with Redwall though; ever since the iPhone and normalized social media spiked the free and open side of the web has been shrinking and receding year by year. AI is only going to turbo charge things in a negative direction.

 

[MegaDrive1987]

The Wayback machine exists.
Sure that some of the internet is dead, but at least you can relive it.

I love that site, I find myself browsing it for hours sometimes looking at sites I used to visit back in the day as well as discovering "new" ones I haven't seen before.

 

[Vardalis]

I love that site, I find myself browsing it for hours sometimes looking at sites I used to visit back in the day as well as discovering "new" ones I haven't seen before.

You might like The Old Net then. It tries to catalog stuff in a fun way but still uses Waybackmachine.

 

[MegaDrive1987]

You might like The Old Net then. It tries to catalog stuff in a fun way but still uses Waybackmachine.

Oh yeah I've had a look at that mate.

 

[RanmyakuIchi's icon RanmyakuIchi RanmyakuIchi]

Sorry about killing the internet, guys.