Where Did All the Humans Go?

smiles@bobbysmiles.xyz (Bobby Smiles) — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 13:59:40 +0530

Background

The internet has come a long way since its inception as the ARPANET in the year 1969. The modern internet we know today is powered primarily by algorithms, on one hand allowing us to curate our feeds with content that we prefer, and on the other allowing apps to have longer user engagement. But what if this was taken one step further? What if all our interactions on the internet are in some way curated for us? What if more than half of our interactions online are not with humans, but with AI bots? This is what the Dead Internet Theory proposes.

The Dead Internet Theory

Originally posted in Agora Road’s Macintosh Cafe, the Dead Internet Theory proposes that most of the internet activity is automated. That is, it says that most of the activity on the current iteration of the internet is not organic, but rather consists of automated content and bot activity, further pushed by curation algorithms.

One of the banners I really liked on the Agora Road's forum

With the rise of AI in recent years, this theory has seen a kind of resurgence, with many popular creators talking about it. Personally I believe there is some truth to this theory, but there are important caveats to this that I also want to point out, because it’s easy to tread past the facts, into the realm of conspiracy.

AI Generated Content

One thing that I am sure of, and evidence being there for, is that AI generated content is more likely to be recommended to the average consumer compared to human-created content. Almost all platforms use complex ranking systems to recommend the content that is most likely to be consumed. Ironically, this is EXACTLY why AI generated content is more likely to rank higher, because AI is also trained on highly ranked content from the internet.

But does this mean human generated searches are never encountered? No, not quite. Human generated content can still rank high on search rankings. It is just that AI generated content ranks high consistently, which makes it harder to find organic content on the web.

AI Bot activity

This one is a little harder to quantify. In all honesty, there is some good evidence indicating that a lot of activity on the internet is in fact bot activity. For example, a cybersecurity company called Imperva found that almost 30% of all website visits on the internet are bot visits. They also found that over half of all internet activity was performed by bots or automated software applications. Many of these actions came from malicious bots, designed to steal information or compromise systems.

One thing that must be kept in mind, however, is that this accounts for the internet as a whole, so it’s not like every single forum is just a wasteland of bot activity. It’s just that across a majority of the internet, bots do indeed contribute to a majority of the activity.

Are Higher Powers Controlling Us Through This?

There is an aspect of this theory I haven’t mentioned yet, and that is the fact that many interpretations of this theory tread into conspiratorial waters. It alleges that governments and big tech try to control us through this bot traffic by intentionally soliciting our feeds with certain types of content. One of the drivers of this solicitation is the bot activity in certain forums. It also alleges that this has been the case since 2016 (frankly, I don’t know how they arrived at this exact year).

Looking at it objectively, I would say that we don’t have any evidence. From recent events, it IS most likely that we are under constant surveillance but I am not sure how much of this aspect of the theory can be proven, if at all it is true. Many comment sections and social platforms have caught bots posing as humans, and in some extreme cases even posting political opinions. But how much of this is just some random person being too lazy to type out his own stuff vs it actually being a political power trying to steer public opinion remains to be seen.

Also there are in fact many places which are still mostly composed of human activity. Sites like Reddit and other small internet forums still are composed mostly of organic, human activity. Of course these sites have their fair share of AI slop content but it is low for now. Even Agora Road’s Macintosh Cafe is still home to quite a bit of organic activity when I last checked.

So what can we conclude from this? While the conspiracy theories do seem outlandish, I wouldn’t entirely dismiss them, mostly considering recent events. I can only say that there is no convincing evidence from either side for me to form an actual opinion.

But What Can We Do?

Unfortunately here, I can’t provide a possible solution. The maximum we can do is try and verify our sources the best we can, but really how far can we go? How much can we verify each and every source for what is possibly a simple online interaction? It would be very difficult, and dare I say, kind of tedious.

The best we can do in the end, is to curate our own knowledge, maintain a few trusted sources that we know have minimal bot interaction, and do our best to bring these sources out to the mainstream. As I mentioned in my article on privacy, we can try and switch to smaller providers and platforms in order to reduce the impact of an increasingly artificial internet.

Conclusion

AI is unfortunately making it harder to distinguish between automated and organic interactions online, whether this is online content, or a random thread on X or a simple Instagram comments section. In the coming future, it remains to be seen how much of our activity online will be with real humans, and how much will be just algorithmic AI slop that is served to us, creating a personalized echo chamber online.

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