Is Anyone Out There?

On death, bots, and the fading human internet

A couple of weeks ago, an old friend shuffled off our mortal coil. Bummer. Reflecting on his passing, I started to think of others I’ve known who’ve gone cold. Scrolling through my Facebook Friends list, I counted eleven people who I know are dead. I guess if nobody sees to it that Facebook memorializes you, or no one knows your password, or, for that matter, if none of your associates think to do anything, your FB presence can carry on forever. Or as long as there’s still the Internet.

Which, of course, calls to mind the Dead Internet Theory that dates back to about 2016 and postulates that ‘net activity is mainly the result of bot activity and algorithmic content generation. I don’t know if that was true then, but it’s becoming more so every day. And AI is making the bots more…um, convincing? Well, anyway, they’re bolstered by it.

It's long been that you have Customer Service Reps and Ordering Portals that involve no one besides you. And you can have conversations with bots, sometimes knowingly, sometimes not.

But AI is now riding herd on search engines, summarizing, via their own bias, what parts of a search you need to see. Increasingly, people are just looking at the AI summary in their search results without bothering to check the sources.

Eventually, the actual source sites will see declining click volume and revenue. If they go away, information becomes less flavored and more conformist.

But the chatbots may be more of a menace. We’re now hearing of “AI Psychosis” resulting from people relying on AI for companionship and even therapy. I’ve had “conversations” with Grok, ChatGPT, and others. Responses can seem quite human in tone, even when they don’t actually make sense. An answer may make you want to argue, but I always try to remember it's just software replying, and it really doesn’t (couldn't) care.

Meanwhile, the environment for actual humans is getting bleaker. Enter AI slop—the endless stream of low-effort, auto-generated graphics and videos flooding social media. A current favorite seems to be household pets wielding weapons: cats with AK-47s, dachshunds in battle gear. Absurd? Absolutely. And after a while, not even funny. Their sheer volume makes everything else online feel even less credible than before.

Ready for a return to normalcy? How about AI actress Tilly Norwood? If she is truly a harbinger of what’s to come for acting, what will the scandal rags do? Scary, man.

And looking on the human side, if you have (as have I) been a participant in Q&A forums, you may notice that one you haven’t thought about in a while is still there. Then you go to visit it and see that the last time someone posted was in 2024. There are many forums, devoted to all manner of subjects, that gradually become derelict.

So, in the course of time, I will die, and my Facebook self will then be accompanied by my silent Facebook Friends, and my Facebook page will become an authentic virtual ghost town.

Heh, just in time for Halloween.