The internet is ever evolving, and with it, ideas and trends have changed. How many of these are the work of bots?

    You know you’re real. You know that you can see the world around you and comprehend it in only the ways a human could. You know that you can breathe in and out and you’re aware of your own mortality. But have you ever felt the uncanny feeling that everything on the internet is fake or dead? Well, you wouldn’t be alone in this. 

    The Dead Internet Theory is exactly what it sounds like, the idea that everything on the internet is just bot activity and created only for the purpose of algorithm circulation. This theory suggests the extermination of organic human creativity and propels the concept of trends being used to manipulate societies cognitive abilities. 

    The first suggestion of this theory came from an essay written in Sept. of 2021 in The Atlantic by Kaitlyn Tiffany. Tiffany wrote about the bleak recycled trends that circulated Twitter in those mundane pre-Elon Musk times. The central idea of her essay suggested that the internet had died in 2016 to early 2017 and now “is empty and devoid of people,” Tiffany wrote.

    Many wrote it off as an outlandish theory. Her essay quickly joined a heaping pile of other outrageous conspiracy theories. However, people are beginning to realize that maybe her theory was not wrong. Maybe it was just too soon.

    In 2021 the internet felt dead with the lack of creativity and algorithmic circulation forcing people to act like bots. Now, in 2024, the internet feels dead because the bots have begun to behave like people. 

    These bots are posting outlandish and so obviously AI generated content that just looking at their posts feels exhausting. 

    A notorious example of this would be the “Crab Jesus.” A jarring combination of Facebook imagery and artificial intelligence used to test what would go the most viral. People’s cognitive understanding of content and the brainlessness of AI led to weeks of viral images that combined crustaceans, Jesus, and female flight attendants. 

    These posts proved to be confusing and weird, yet they still went viral for weeks on end. And these kinds of posts are beginning to circulate the internet once again. 

    This time however, TikTok is the catalyst and a teenagers sense of humor is the target. An AI generated story following “Cat-Superman” and Princess Elsa have been seen on many For You Pages. These posts are wild and usually make no sense, yet somehow, teenagers cannot help but find these posts hilarious. 

    Hundreds of them are reposted and reposted again every day, launching them further and further into popularity.

    But AI isn’t the only thing killing the internet. Lack of creativity has become just as guilty.

    Maybe you know of Hailey Welch? If not, maybe you know her as the “Hawk Tuah girl.” Welch went viral back in early summer of 2024 because of a comment she had made in an interview filmed in Nashville. Since then, her catchphrase has turned into a meme that hasn’t relented in months.

    Many now complain that Welch is milking her five seconds of fame by continuing to reuse the catchphrase over and over. Nothing new has been posted on her page since the interview and many believe nothing new ever will be. 

    It does not help that in early Sept, Welch announced the creation of her podcast “Talk Tuah” that aired its first episode on Sept. 10th. By that point, everyone had grown sick of Welch and her overused joke, making the announcement of the podcast ill-received on Tiktok and Instagram.

    Hailey Welch is not the only example. Perhaps the earliest 2023 example was the “Gen-Alpha brain rot.” Things like “Skibidi Toilet” and “Fanum Tax” were once hilarious to teenagers because of their absurdity but now, they are obnoxious and dried out like other memes used and reused to the point of no return. 

    AI has played their parts in these memes as well. Song remixes of “Skibidi Toilet” and “Hawk Tuah” have been made, T-shirts have been sold on TikTok Shop with these phrases printed on them, and you cannot talk to a kid under the age of ten without hearing them at least once.

    All of this begs the question, is the internet really dead? Or is this just the new reality of the internet’s trends?