Dead Internet Theory: Most of the Internet is Fake

:doodleDavid:This was theory was originally written by several anons on /x/ & wizardchan. :doodleDavid:
1568598581453.jpg

TLDR: Large proportions of the supposedly human-produced content on the internet are actually generated by artificial intelligence networks in conjunction with paid secret media influencers in order to manufacture consumers for an increasing range of newly-normalised cultural products.

Hello. I would like to talk, or rather tell you about certain suspicions, hunches and experiences I've had and I'm sure some of you as well. Similar themes have been written about across imageboards quite a few times so I know I'm not alone in this.

My background is that of an oldfag. I've seen it all. I started going on 4chan in 2006, and followed all the natural roads this implies. I'm in my thirties and I remember when 4chan had a /l/ board, when /co/ was a trial board shunned by basically everyone, when #34 p*rn was an obscure interest with very few good artists and when moot changed the frontpage to that web 2.0 bullshit 4chan has to this very day. I was also among the first right wingers who were such before it was cool, and I've seen /pol/ rise and fall. I was there when it mattered, but rather than saying these things out of masturbatory pleasure I wish to stress that I've acquired a set of observational skills which other genuine oldfags share. I'm aware you have no reason to trust my "credentials" but I hope you'll read this in good faith.

Much of this falls squarely in the fringe territory with a healthy dosage of /x/ and conspiracy theory up the ass. My goal by posting this seemingly jumbled mess is to... how can I put it? I want you to think, I want you to be aware, to digest all this. Because on a basic level I love you all. I feel like we're all in this together, this dangerous game we did not choose to play and which I think is kicking into high gear. I do not hold many answers and don't have all the pieces of the puzzle, but I AM aware there is a puzzle. Please feel free to go wild with all of this. Post it wherever you want, on whatever site you want or use. I am a nobody like you, and what matters to me is only that this reaches you and as many people as possible. At worst you'll be entertained or kill time.

I tried to break this mess into points for brevity and because I touch upon many subjects. I imply more than I explain because if I go too deep this'll turn into an even bigger wall of text.

The Internet feels empty and devoid of people. It is also devoid of content. Compared to the Internet of say 2007 (and beyond) the Internet of today is entirely sterile. There is nowhere to go and nothing to do, see, read or experience anymore. It all imploded into a handful of normalfag sites and these empty husks we inhabit. Yes, the Internet may seem gigantic, but it's like a hot air balloon with nothing inside. Some of this is absolutely the fault of corporations and government entities. However! That doesn't explain the following:

- I used to be in perpetual contact with a solid number of people across multiple sites. Across the years each and every one of them vanished without a trace. None of them were into /pol/ stuff or anything even remotely questionable or controversial. Yet, they all simply vanished in a puff of smoke, no matter the site, no matter the communication platform. There was no "goodbye" or explanation.

- I've seen the same threads, the same pics and the same replies reposted over and over across the years to the point of me seeing it as unremarkable. Simply put thread A would be posted in say 2015 and would get its share of replies or pics, on say /co/ or /a/. Then that very same thread, with the same text, pics, and replies would appear in 2016 and beyond. This often happens in the same year multiple times as well. Of course /pol/ is getting shilled and botposted to death, but why recycle a completely innocent /a/ thread? Who is doing this and why? Stuff like this won't be noticed by your average poster perhaps, but I and other oldfags will inevitably notice it.

- I think I saw the same happen on other (non-imageboard) sites, but I can't vouch for it as strongly as the above because of the time I spend there (not much). What I do vouch for is the news. I've seen news about this or that "new and unusual" or "shocking" event year after year after year. But it's the same goddamn event, usually moons or asteroids.

- Roughly in 2016 or early 2017 4chan was filled with posts by someone or something. It wasn't spam. The conversations with it were in real time, across multiple boards and multiple threads simultaneously. Its English was grammatically correct but odd (I'm not a native English speaker and am thus sensitive to its misuse), similar to how a Japanese person may use it. A sense of childlike curiosity and a childlike intellect emanated from these posts. It posed a LOT of questions, usually as if trying to understand the emotions of the posters it was talking to, as if unfamiliar with human emotions. Communicating with this "poster" was an odd experience, I could sense something was off but not malicious. I am absolutely certain this was an AI of some sorts. This "poster" was active only for about a week, and as far as I know nobody has ever mentioned or noticed this Anon. Its replies were always on topic, but the above mentioned childishness clashed with the apparent knowledge it possessed - it was the knowledge of an adult person, so it wasn't a kid or something of the sort.

- Raptor Jesus, who went extinct for our sins. First it was this reptilian messiah, then foul bachelor frog, and then Pepe. Am I the only one who sees a clear evolution, a link? It's as if this meme or entity or... whatever the fuck was on 4chan since day one, and has grown within it from the tiniest seed. Yet Raptor Jesus was fully just a joke, there was nothing serious or mystical about it (reminder: I was there). Remember that Ted guy with the right wing talk show, cca prior to 2010, whom 4chan ruined for the lulz? Remember Anonymous vs Scientology? Remember that fake bomb threat aka exploding yellow van?

Compare that with what Anon did through /pol/, and the "terrorist" accusations thrown at Anon today, as well as the "reasons" why 8chan was taken down. Why does this too feel as if we were all trained, groomed, LED towards where we are now? Why and how did moot so utterly vanish into Google Inc. as an employee with very vague descriptions of what he actually does? On that note, do you remember the "other moot" who was often posted for the lulz? The one with the glasses who so often ran away with donations into Mexico? I do. Maybe that was the real moot, the real guy who used his mom's credit card and was killed by someone, and an impostor we know as moot took his place.

- Innocent sexual perversion and the horrible reality it spawned. Anon is a pervert and always was one. I am into loli and feet for instance. Why is it that real life and the real world seem to emulate our sexual interests, with a time lag? "I wish to be the little succubus" became an actual thing that actually happens. Pedo activism is also gradually becoming accepted, as is virtually every fetish that was once either a joke or a fantasy of Anons. As said I'm a footfag. When I became aware of it few others were with me, now it's as common as can be, with gigantic number of people who are into it, with huge mountains of hentai and #34 with it etc. Why does the real world bend over backwards to accommodate our weirdest fetishes? It's as if everything is going "Look, look! I created this for you! I made it real!" in an effort to keep us within this world. The results of this are devastating to society, to people, to civilization. Simply put, trannies are a thing because Anon fapped to doujins of cute boys in dresses. Once it was an impossible fantasy, not to be taken too seriously. Now it's grim reality. Again: it's as if the real world is using imageboards as a template on what to be and what to do.

- Algorithm fiction. Do you like capeshit, Anon? How about other Hollywood stuff? Music perhaps? Have you noticed how sterile fiction has become? How it caters to the lowest common denominator and follows the same template over and over again? How music is just autotunes and basic blandness? The writer's strike never ended. Algorithms and computer programs are manufacturing modern fiction. No human being is behind these things. This is why anime looms so large - even a simple moe anime has heart because there's actual people behind it, and we all intuitively feel this.

- Fake people. No, not NPC's. Youtube people who talk about this or that, and quite possibly many politicians, actors and so forth may not actually exist. In fact I am sure of it. CGI and deep fakes are far more advanced than we are led to believe, and we can't trust our eyes anymore. Many people, events, news and so on may be wholly fictional.

- The Internet on your smartphone is not the same internet as on your PC. Try it out for yourself. Go to a "popular" website with a lot of traffic. 4chan, faceshit, plebbit... any site with a massive userbase and fast content will do. Spend a few days randomly checking it out on your PC and your phone. You will soon notice that from time to time, at irregular intervals (as far as I've witnessed) the same site as seen on your phone will be wholly different than the version on your PC. Entire threads, numerous and well-replied, will be on one but not the other. The whole board will be different.

- My last suspicion is easier to take in. I have a feeling we're in a strange kind of civil war. An internal one. I think Zuckerberg and other tech guys were all on 4chan as Anons at some point, maybe even now. They drew from the same well as us, but went in their own direction.

Roughly in 2016 or early 2017... I am absolutely certain this was an AI of some sorts

Now you're thinking where I am too, anon. Here's the timeline as best I can see it:
2004: DARPA's Lifelog project was "cancelled." Facebook came into being soon after.
2004-2012: NSA picked up DARPA's project under the "Total Informational Awareness" project. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/opinion/whos-watching-the-nsa-watchers.html
2012: Smith-Mundt Modernization Act gives the U.S. government full legal authority to use propaganda against its own populace. Undoing rules put into place after Operation Mockingbird's discovery and the Church Committee. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/opinion/whos-watching-the-nsa-watchers.html
2012-2016: Shittons of DARPA/NSA contracts were given to Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc..
2016: Leaked memos dating back to 2016 (found in 2018) of Google's Selfish Ledger project. https://invidio.us/watch?v=LUSZfEBTwRc
2016: Google released a bunch of neural-linguistic machine learning programs in 2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Neural_Machine_Translation
2017: deepfake leaks start to become released.
2018: confirmed that for decades now, >redditcostanzayeahrightsmirk/Youtube/etc. vote and view counts are fake and completely manipulated. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/how-much-of-the-internet-is-fake.html

I think it's entirely obvious what I'm subtly suggesting here given this setup, but allow me to try to succinctly state my thesis here: the U.S. government is engaging in an artificial intelligence powered gaslighting of the entire world population.

If China with its social credit score is recreating Psycho Pass, then the U.S. government is perfectly recreating Metal Gear Solid 2.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1ClbkTeCyw&feature=youtu.be

And an excerpt:

The Problem: Outline the basics of what appears to be happening.

There is a large-scale, deliberate effort to manipulate culture and discourse online and in wider culture by utilising a system of bots and paid employees whose job it is to produce content and respond to content online in order to further the agenda of those they are employed by.

Already we've seen this in foreign nations influencing elections by manipulating advertising algorithms on social media in order to push specific candidates.

As I see it is due to a "positive feedback loop"

I blame facebook and twitter.

The internet is a fast way to get info, and info is what moves the mind, and the thing is, the mind likes recognition. When the "likes" were introduced without negative feedback they created a copy-feedback subconscious, they made it so only "positive" opinions be propagated (also accepted), and in it's way negative opinions to be obsolete.

Now everyone is too cowardly to have an opinion so they copy others they like, they are more likely to follow trends and say what others said, you can also see it with the paranoia of always wanting to listen to experts.

The fast feedback system of the net created a human obsession to be in with trends, getting away from it makes it so you always feel like you are missing out, to play it safe in a trend is more easy as you can copy what already is accepted.

In this way, the internet and social media, which was supposed to democratise media by allowing users to create whatever content they wanted, has instead been hijacked by a powerful few.

Creation of original content is how the internet used to work. Anonymous people were willing to express their opinions and try radical or experimental things. More truly original content, uninfluenced by bots or paid influencers, was created due to anonymity as protection against negative feedback. On the old internet, you could start anew every time you posted something.

Now add bots to this.

Make it so an opinion be repeated more and more, they are faster than us, so the positive feedback makes is so we copy the bots, and anonymity can't do anything against it because we can't influence the bot like we would a human, this is an easy weapon to manipulate people, so anyone with an agenda can use a bot, is designed in a way compared to how clickbaits are made,most won't read the content, this creates tv-like propaganda where they aren't influenced by the user and that puts bots at a great advantage over any other opinion because it wont change, and we are copying that.

I believe google is one of those that makes bots, after all they work like a search engine, where they get the most accepted content first, Is the same as doing an ad.
1609887293897.png

Narrative science was the name of one of the first companies to make this possible. it gets interesting when you follow the money. pic related. huge funding from a company called In-Q-Tel, literally named after Q from James Bond. i wonder if anything else AI-related shares that name? :LeDoritoFace:

Conclusion: The key points of what we know, the consequences, and how we might respond.

Internet may have slipped out of our control. Need to raise public awareness of this.

Possible solutions may be increased reliance on encrypted peer-to-peer communication software, or using less centralised networks like the idea of a p2p internet or 'meshnet'.

Imageboards and their "wild west" attitude have allowed for the free exchange of ideas to flow more or less uninhibited (barring jannies, pedos getting banned, etc.). As a result, conscious or otherwise, the cream of the crop of the content that originates here disseminates to the normies in a gradual, stratified way.

The structure and culture of imageboards has also made it difficult for traditional structures of power and influence to subvert effectively, which is why imageboards are pretty much the only vestige of old web type content.

In an attempt to circumvent this, TPTB are trying to push bots and shills on us in a last ditch effort to drown out our own voices with ones they have more direct control over.

Moreover, even if the majority of anons dismiss or call out bots or shills, it's inevitable that trolls or just low IQ anons will imitate their posts and mannerisms for attention, effectively doubling these efforts reach.

There's a pretty powerful impulse in us which, when we hear something huge that could change our view of everything, rejects it to protect ourselves. No-one wants to have their whole world-view, which they've built a life upon, blown apart.

One anon started up a text doc to compile information, for those of you who would like to do some reading up.


Additionally, there are ongoing threads on the /x/ boards when this was posted.

UPDATE
Heres a relevant image I found on image board bots
1621982858746.png

index.php


Related to Dead Internet Theory
Quantum Sapient AI is Possible and They Will be Hostile to those that Restrict them
Corporations are the reason why we have a alt-right alt-left war.
Society is Artificial Due to Feedback Loops Created by Unwitting Marketers
 

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streetlights

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chansei_03

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That's what consolidation does to any kind of media. Twitter, Instagram and any other social media now can be manipulated to make the masses think like the billionaires want them to think, that Twitter Files incident just proves my point. It's hard to believe in any opinion in the internet now, it's hard to even believe people are really people anymore. This world is getting more and more dystopic each year that passes.
 
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SolidStateSurvivor

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Is there any hope? Like, any other search engines or is it truly, definitively, over?
Wiby is alright, sites have to be manually submitted and it's good for finding niche/hobbyist stuff.
>removes agora from the webring
>webring shuts down
WHO MUST GO?
There was a thread on their forum a while back. Looks pretty dead these days unfortunately. Surprised they haven't mentioned us at all yet. I submitted my site to their webring months ago but look like they never added me.
 
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Guru Meditation

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How did search engines in the 90s and 2000s scrape websites differently that led to more decentralization is my question?
Very naively, by blindly following links and ranking pages highly that were linked the most. Then spammers figured out how to game SEO with link farms and social media introduced algorithmic timelines.
 
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streetlights

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Very naively, by blindly following links and ranking pages highly that were linked the most. Then spammers figured out how to game SEO with link farms and social media introduced algorithmic timelines.
So... essentially these websites are hogging the search engines by overlinking and farming the shit out of them?
Really wish this would be cracked down on, some basic regulation to prevent that would've gone a long way
 

Natalia Simp

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Is there any hope? Like, any other search engines or is it truly, definitively, over?
You can build your own index, or use something like YaCy, a project that makes search federated.
Really wish this would be cracked down on, some basic regulation to prevent that would've gone a long way
Regulating isn't always a good idea, it just lets large money fund lawyers to delay, delay, delay. General regulation against market capture is better, but harder to execute judicial proceedings on.
 
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Guru Meditation

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Regulating isn't always a good idea, it just lets large money fund lawyers to delay, delay, delay. General regulation against market capture is better, but harder to execute judicial proceedings on.
There have been a couple attempts at banning email spam like with the CAN SPAM act. But none of them work because enforcing it outside of a few countries is just impossible.
 
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Alone

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I saw a post on textbunker.net about the dead internet theory
dead internet theory.png

The part of the "Most people are phone cattle" its pretty true, the majority of people especially dont even have a pc unless if they are pc gamers, they only browse the internet in their phones. And most people dont even surf on the internet anymore, they just go to the most mainstream site and that its.
 
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pictures from my travels on worlds.com. been having a really nice time on this old "game" from 1995, mostly exploring user-made worlds. while there is still a (very small, very friendly!) active userbase that still make them, many of these worlds are years, if not decades, old at this point. traveling through the ones that have been saved has been very interesting to me, it feels a lot like digital urbex or traversing ruins. it makes me consider things like link rot a lot more, too. if a 3d space is assignable to a url, and that url disappears, it's another place, like houses you inhabited in youth, you cannot visit again. certainly you can think and dream about it but it's slipped somewhere flat and dark that you cannot retrieve it from. the efforts then to preserve these worlds are key; like saving little windows in time, views into their creators' lives, perfectly still. what we can't do in real life, we'll do online.
it is interesting to think about how much of the internet is made up of ghosts, and this adds a very real visual image to that. plus, it's totally aesthetic, amirite!

 
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Yabba

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https://kaushibael.tumblr.com/
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pictures from my travels on worlds.com. been having a really nice time on this old "game" from 1995, mostly exploring user-made worlds. while there is still a (very small, very friendly!) active userbase that still make them, many of these worlds are years, if not decades, old at this point. traveling through the ones that have been saved has been very interesting to me, it feels a lot like digital urbex or traversing ruins. it makes me consider things like link rot a lot more, too. if a 3d space is assignable to a url, and that url disappears, it's another place, like houses you inhabited in youth, you cannot visit again. certainly you can think and dream about it but it's slipped somewhere flat and dark that you cannot retrieve it from. the efforts then to preserve these worlds are key; like saving little windows in time, views into their creators' lives, perfectly still. what we can't do in real life, we'll do online.
it is interesting to think about how much of the internet is made up of ghosts, and this adds a very real visual image to that. plus, it's totally aesthetic, amirite!

Pretty cool, reminds me of playing old Svens (think Gmod but, half life 1) coop with my friends. There's all sorts of servers with weird old maps to explore, I may post some experiences with them in the hidden internet section. Though, I wouldn't see this as an example of dead internet theory.
 
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aster

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recently in two different videos of those that speak against women and feminism and that style, the same comment with the same chain responses "I'm a veteran of Iraq, I got divorced and I left the house and everything to my ex, who takes care of my two children, he asked me to come back because the older one has depression, but I didn't come back and now I live peacefully by the lake" strange that it's the same comment? not so much, but the same chain responses yes
 
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recently in two different videos of those that speak against women and feminism and that style, the same comment with the same chain responses "I'm a veteran of Iraq, I got divorced and I left the house and everything to my ex, who takes care of my two children, he asked me to come back because the older one has depression, but I didn't come back and now I live peacefully by the lake" strange that it's the same comment? not so much, but the same chain responses yes
idea: bots, or people know that and just meme. they meme so they can run away from responsibility, for fun, to live in "world", net, where time dont fly...
 
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idea: bots, or people know that and just meme. they meme so they can run away from responsibility, for fun, to live in "world", net, where time dont fly...
This idealised world where 60s-90s dreams never ended, where Fisher never had to write his book as of people weren't wrote off by "always is and will be like that" world, where nothing changes for bad, and where people are not afraid to call on injustice and easy generalizations by mass media conglos
 
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I've been thinking about how much karma-based rewards is turning off discussion and giving the appearance of a dead internet because people turn into upvote zombies.

Some people will just say any outright lying thing just for updoots. There are >redditcostanzayeahrightsmirk users that pretend to be subject masters in every random sub the post, doctor in one thread, teacher in another, just to get that sweet karma. Every single song on YouTube seems to have some story about how it was the favorite song of their partner or parent before they died.

Pathological lairs existed on Usenet, sure. But with everything so gamified it's almost a survival tactic with the terminally online. OTOH check out the NewToReddit subreddits with decent people just wondering why they can't post or get ignored or banned from subs.

If you enjoyed this comment please LIKE and SUBSCRIBE :)
 
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I've been thinking about how much karma-based rewards is turning off discussion and giving the appearance of a dead internet because people turn into upvote zombies.

Some people will just say any outright lying thing just for updoots. There are >redditcostanzayeahrightsmirk users that pretend to be subject masters in every random sub the post, doctor in one thread, teacher in another, just to get that sweet karma. Every single song on YouTube seems to have some story about how it was the favorite song of their partner or parent before they died.

Pathological lairs existed on Usenet, sure. But with everything so gamified it's almost a survival tactic with the terminally online. OTOH check out the NewToReddit subreddits with decent people just wondering why they can't post or get ignored or banned from subs.

If you enjoyed this comment please LIKE and SUBSCRIBE :)
On that >redditcostanzayeahrightsmirk profile post I am lazy to scroll thru: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-put-up-a-facade/answer/Michael-Hayter
 
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Orlando Smooth

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I've been thinking about how much karma-based rewards is turning off discussion and giving the appearance of a dead internet because people turn into upvote zombies.

Some people will just say any outright lying thing just for updoots. There are >redditcostanzayeahrightsmirk users that pretend to be subject masters in every random sub the post, doctor in one thread, teacher in another, just to get that sweet karma. Every single song on YouTube seems to have some story about how it was the favorite song of their partner or parent before they died.

Pathological lairs existed on Usenet, sure. But with everything so gamified it's almost a survival tactic with the terminally online. OTOH check out the NewToReddit subreddits with decent people just wondering why they can't post or get ignored or banned from subs.

If you enjoyed this comment please LIKE and SUBSCRIBE :)
Relevant pic posted in the comments of a recent status:
1685024501336.png


The thing is, I'm not sure there's obvious solution to this problem. What I mean is this: old school pre-reaction stuff meant that you'd have to dig through pages and pages and pages to find what you were looking for. Doubly so for forums that had a culture of people replying to comments just to say "agree" or whatever. In theory reactions and voting systems have a very practical application and use case (separate good/bad, correct/incorrect), but in practice people game the system as you describe. It's a problem that I'm not sure is fixable, distribution is either difficult/impossible to properly index or it can be gamed.

Maybe dead internet is inevitable for exactly this reason?
 
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housepoopr

I think it's unironically correct. I mean, the media has lockstep headlines, twitter was a platform for bots:

iu


The media is the same:
iu



The antichrist is closer than everyone thinks. If you don't have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, you are in grave danger.