The Dead Internet Theory
Do you believe in the dead internet theory? So, recently there's a comment on a subreddit called r/nostupidquestions calling out how the posts on the front page was a repost from 4 years ago. The posts, comments, everything are all the exact same. They check the accounts and it was accounts that's created only a few days ago since the posts. Not only reddit though, you can see this stuff happening on other sites/apps too, for example all the samey/bot posts you see on popular youtube videos, especially music videos, or people on twitter sometimes saying the exact same thing or posts on twitter suddenly gaining tens to hundreds of views just seconds after posting, etc. All of this ties down to a theory called "the dead internet theory" that asserts that the Internet now consists mainly of bot activity and automatically generated content that is manipulated by algorithmic curation, marginalizing organic human activity (wikipedia). Especially now with the advancement of ai, they could just deploy bots that can mimic human replies almost flawlessly. So, think about it, whenever you make a comment or posts somewhere, there's a chance you could be replying or seeing replies from absolutely nobody but just a string of algorithms. You're in an empty space just talking to curated responses. Isn't that creepy? But the big question is, if the theory was true then....where did everybody go? Surely, i'm not the only one using the internet....right?
