the internet is fake
Stop letting it pretend otherwise
They do not attend to the things said to them, because they are always fully engrossed with the things they are doing. For indeed few men are idle in democratic nations; life is passed in the midst of noise and excitement, and men are so engaged in acting that little remains to them for thinking.
-Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America
For me, last year marked the death of the em-dash as we know it— that’s because every time someone wrote with AI or produced content with AI, it seemed to pop up. Like a persistent mold, the em-dash seemed to flourish in forums, websites, and social media channels. Then came the AI videos. In 2025, Will Smith could suddenly eat spaghetti the right way. Just two years earlier, we were only treated to the most ghastly of incarnations.
I mean, just look at it. The spaghetti wasn’t even cooked!
The age of AI slop now reigns supreme across online articles and social media. And, since that’s where we get our information, our emotions, and our motivations, that means that our beliefs are officially AI slop.
1. Articles & Comments are AI.
Last year, research from Graphite showed that AI content had officially surpassed human-made content. Today, more than 50% of online articles are generated by AI. On Reddit, AI is making anywhere from an estimated 15 to 40 percent of comments.
To a lot of people, the doomsday forecast is a little late.
The dead internet theory, a term that pops up a lot on Reddit, actually cranks back the sloppification date to around 2016. The idea is that bots and algorithms, long before the em-dash, have worked hard to isolate people and make it harder to connect on the internet.
2. Social Media is AI Media.
Think about the time you spend scrolling on social media versus the time you actually spend reaching out to people. In general, the ratio of mindless consumption to genuine interaction is pretty bad.
In a survey of more than 5,000 social media users from the Survey Center on American Life, more than half of respondents said that they don’t usually use social media to interact with real friends.
This leaves us with the “feed” we’ve all come to know and love, the variable reward machine that shoves us full of the information we like best and the machines like best for us.
What you see there also isn’t real— 71% of social media images are now AI-generated.
3. Digital Discovery is AI.
Want to find some information that isn’t generated by AI?
Most people don’t.
Bain estimates that 80% of search users use AI-generated summaries for their searches nearly half the time and 60% of searches end before anyone even clicks an article in the first place. If they even make it to the search engine. About 25% of users rely on ChatGPT as their new search engine, instead.
Also, people think ChatGPT is really doing the hard work. Almost half (45%) think that the system is looking up the information from an exact database, rather than stitching together a guesstimate from a bunch of different sources.
Your Beliefs on AI
AI, on the other hand, is the most embarrassing thing we’ve ever invented in mankind’s time on Earth. Oh, so you can’t do the work? Is that what you’re telling me? You can’t figure it out. This seems to be the justification of AI – I couldn’t do it. This is something to be embarrassed about. The ad campaign for ChatGPT should be the opposite of Nike. You just can’t do it.
-Jerry Seinfeld, Duke Commencement Ceremony 2024
To recap:
The articles you read - including the news and the comments - is often generated by AI and delivered to your preferred medium by AI
The social media you consume is delivered to you by AI and generated by AI and created by AI that wants you to keep scrolling
The answers you find on search engines are AI
If you get your beliefs from these sources, the logical outcome is that all that your beliefs are AI
The AI internet is not dead. The AI internet is fake.
Put down your phone.
Get a book, call a friend.
Go outside.
Or at least look out the window.
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How do we know this wasn't written with AI?!
Sobering stuff - especially in the midst of senior thesis work. Gonna be giving those citations extra eyes this year 👀👀