A few years ago “Dead Internet Theory” was just some creepypasta. But thanks to the power of Artificial Intelligence, our most dystopian nightmares become more plausible by the day. The theory reached public awareness after it was published on the small webforum Agora Road’s Macintosh Café in January of 2021. Pseudonymous author “IlluminatiPirate” posted the theory, which he claimed had developed earlier on the 4chan board /x/ and Wizardchan.
Jake, Julian, and Travis discuss the history of the dead internet theory, the new short form AI video platform Vibes, and the continued push by tech giants to make humans superfluous. This includes the rise of AI actors as prophesied in the 2002 film Simone.
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qaapodcast.com
QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
Travis covers the history of dead internet theory.
Jake covers the entertainment industry implications.
Limit Julian to three death threats or less.
Include nostalgia for the old internet.
The episode length is approximately one hour and 20 minutes.
Generating your episode.
Thinking.
you Bye.
If you're hearing this, well done.
You found a way to connect to the internet.
Welcome to the QAA Podcast Premium Episode 308.
Dead Internet Theory.
As always, we are your host, Jake Rogatansky.
Julian Fields.
And Travis View.
Artificial intelligence is devoid of intelligence because it is devoid of artifice.
True artifice is the artifice of the body in the throes of passion.
The artifice of the sign in seduction.
The artifice of ambivalence in gesture.
The artifice of ellipsis in language.
The artifice of the mask before the face.
The artifice of the pithy remark that completely alters meaning.
So-called intelligent machines deploy artifice only in the feeblest sense of the word, breaking linguistic, sexual or cognitive acts down into their simplest elements and digitizing them so that they can be resynthesized according to models.
They can generate all the possibilities of a program or of a potential object.
But Artifice is in no way concerned with what generates.
Merely with what alters reality.
Artifice is the power of illusion.
These machines have the artlessness of pure calculation.
And the games they offer are based solely on commutations and combinations.
In this sense, they may be said to be virtuous as well as virtual.
They can never succumb to their own object.
They are immune even to the seduction of their own knowledge.
Their virtue resides in their transparency, their functionality, their absence of passion and artifice.
Artificial intelligence is a celibate machine.
Jean Baudriard, Xerox and Infinity.
When I think about like why I was attracted to the internet, even like 30 years ago, before there was like modern social media, like back in like the dial-up days.
I'm reminded of the famous but apocryphal quip by the bank robber Willie Sutton.
When asked why you rob banks, Sutton reportedly replied, That's where the money is.
My man.
Julian, why are you in the United States?
That's where the QAnon is.
Well, back when my grade school friends slipped me a piece of paper containing a phone number to a local BBS server, which I called through my family's PC 144K modem to access a message board, a collection of dirty jokes, and the multiplayer game Pimp Wars.
Whoa!
The appeal of the internet was obvious.
That's where the content is.
My god, you actually kind of are even unk compared to me.
Like my first chat was M I R C which which is like internet relayed chat, but it's post-BBS.
My first was uh I was at my childhood friend Jeff R's house, and we had a and he had America's rapist, Jeff Rapist.
And uh he had America online, and I remember dialing into that shit, and we went into chat room immediately.
Went into chat rooms and were pretending to be older, you know, older kids.
Instantly we went into like a dangerous place.
We are like a Russian nesting doll of unkness.
Like Travis unks me, I unk you.
And I guess you can you can unk uh I'm like unk in between.
I'm like unk in the middle.
I'm like, I'm like two and a half unks.
I'm the half unk.
You're the half.
You're the baby.
I love it.
Two and a half unks.
Dude.
Uh fuck.
This show needs to we need to Oh fuck, I almost oh my god, I almost elbowed a huge big creamy cup of iced coffee off of my desk and onto a guitar or potentially just the floor shattered.
Oh boy, I really gotta rein it in.
I really hope that I can make you laugh enough to create a huge disaster again.
All right, please continue.
But it wasn't just seeing the content.
It was like feeling like I was more connected to the world and the people in it through that content.
You know, the information I saw online may or may not be accurate, but I could be assured that it exists because a living person thought it was important enough to share.
You know, the art that I saw was like conceived by human imaginations, and the anonymous entities who like to argue are like at least passionate enough to use some of the time out of their life in order to advocate for their cause.
And they didn't know or care if the person they were arguing with was a 12-year-old boy.
Me.
Yeah, that that was literally me.
Yeah, I like my whole thing was like chatting to adults and being like, like enjoying the moment where I reveal that I'm young, and they're like, whoa, like you're so smart.
Uh if I was a girl I would have been groomed many times over.
It's not funny.
But what would happen if the people who own the online platforms kept the content but remove the human creators?
And what if that has already happened?
Now that's essentially the question posed by the dead internet theory.
In its original form, uh it posits that since around 2016, the internet has been overwhelmed by bot activity and AI generated content that poses as authentic.
This content is uh funneled to our screens by the algorithms designed by the powers that be to control humanity on a mass scale.
This is very appealing to me because I do feel like one of the things I've developed over time is just like a filter where a lot of the internet, like the majority of what I see, doesn't even appear to me.
Like it is like cardboard, it's made up.
Like I'm scanning right past it.
And it's kind of like instinctual because I I have been on the internet a long time.
But yeah, I I I would believe this.
The idea was popularized four years ago as a conspiracy theory, or perhaps as a bit of paranoid creepypasta.
But as advances in generative AI technology made the idea of an inhuman internet more plausible, it's become worthwhile to, you know, wonder if the dead internet theory is uh to paraphrase Michael Burry and the big short, not wrong, just early.
Oh fuck, I love that movie.
And you know, it's it's it's become very, very popular.
In fact, just a few weeks ago, Sam Altman, CEO of uh OpenAI, tweeted this.
I never took the dead internet theory that seriously, but it seems like there are really a lot of LLM run Twitter accounts now.
Yeah, that's that's a that's a real, we're all looking for the person who did this moment.
Now, the theory reached public awareness after it was published on the small web forum Agora Rhodes Macintosh Cafe in January of 2021.
The pseudonymous author Illuminati Pirate posted the theory, which he claimed was developed on the 4chan board X and Wizard Chan, the image board specifically for incels.
So here's the crux of the theory from that original post.
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's nowhere to go and nothing to do, see, read, or experience anymore.
It all imploded into a handful of 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.
To support this theory, uh, Illuminati Pirate runs through several anecdotes, most of which aren't convincing.
For example, he says that he used to be in contact with people he met on the internet who for some reason stopped posting without so much as a goodbye.
He thinks it's suspicious that Moot, the creator of 4chan, suddenly gave up running that uh forum to work for Google, speculating that the real moot was killed and replaced with an imposter.
He believes that the social media experience is entirely different on a PC as opposed to a smartphone, and this is evidence that uh the content is inauthentic.
Illuminati Pirate also offers this point.
Fake people.
No, not NPCs.
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 at 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.
You've been listening to a sample of a premium episode of the QAA Podcast.
For access to the full episode, as well as all past premium episodes and all of our podcast mini-series, go to patreon.com slash QAA.
Travis, why is that such a good deal?
Well, Jake, you get hundreds of additional episodes of the QAA podcast for just five dollars per month.
For that very low price, you get access to over 200 premium episodes, plus all of our miniseries.
That includes 10 episodes of Man Clan with Julian and Nanny, 10 episodes of Perverse with Julian Liv, 10 episodes of The Spectral Voyager with Jake and Brad, plus 20 episodes of Trickle Down with me, Travis View.
It's a bounty of content and the best deal in podcasting.
Travis, for once I agree with you.
And I also agree that people could subscribe by going to patreon.com slash QAA.
Well, that's not an opinion, it's a fact.
You're so right, Jake.
We love and appreciate all of our listeners.
Yes, we do.
And Travis is actually crying right now, I think, out of gratitude, maybe?
