The Dead Internet Theory (Part 1)
Author: All Time Scary Publisher: https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=DEn758DVF9I Publish Date: 2021-9-13 Review Date: Status:⌛️
Annotations
1:15
the simple explanation for the dead internet theory is that the vast majority of the internet is actually generated by artificial intelligence in conjunction with paid media influencers in order to manufacture consumers for an increasingly wider range of newly normalized products as well as to dramatically sway public opinion and control the collective attitude or outlook of people or culture
1:37
for all of the younger people out there who didn’t experience the internet as it used to be the internet of today is vastly different before the advent of the internet connected cell phone or the mass adoption of the home computer before social media even existed the internet was a place where people came to express passion hobbies feelings and thoughts it wasn’t filtered or selectively shown to you based on what an algorithm thinks you want to hear it also wasn’t an echo chamber to reinforce your pre-existing beliefs whatever they may be it wasn’t created to keep you locked into a website or an app for hours and hours every single day the internet was a collection of human thought both right and wrong and what you found and enjoyed was up to you it wasn’t monetized the point of it wasn’t to get as many clicks as possible or to keep you engaged for as long as possible it just was the internet was whatever you made it
3:12
these days the internet feels so empty and devoid of people have you ever noticed that truly hear me out here the internet feels devoid of content it’s safe sterile bland there is nowhere to go nothing to do see or read there are no experiences anymore it’s a collection of 10 or so websites or apps that everyone visits over and over again until they go to sleep only to do it again the next day it’s a series of empty husks the internet seems gigantic but it’s more like a hot air balloon because there’s nothing inside the same repeated threads and pictures and similar replies reposted over and over again across the years to the point that it’s unremarkable anymore all of your friends enjoying the same funny video as you the same talking point shared repeatedly over and over online or how every day something new is trending so you better jump in and give your take on it
4:04
every day it’s something so the conversation can never linger too long there’s always the next new or shocking or unusual thing everyone is talking about i’m sure everyone watching this has heard of a news story that sounds like the one that they’ve heard a thousand times before but this time it’s new and shocking and unusual it boggles the brain for example how many times have we heard something about a new type of moon only happening tonight or tomorrow a blue moon a blood moon a super flower blood moon a pink moon a super pink moon a hunter’s moon a snow moon you get the point
4:40
why does everything feel so fake and manufactured it’s always the same thing or a slightly different thing repeated over and over as if it’s produced content made to distract and occupy your mind
4:52
why get out there and march in the streets to demand better wages or safer working conditions after a grueling day of work when you can go home and saturate your mind on endless mindless escapism the new super glitter moon is happening tonight and jimmy kimmel just said something that is hilarious and dr seuss books are changing aren’t you mad and have you seen the new marvel trailer don’t step back don’t stop to think keep engaged keep scrolling keep buying keep wasting your time keep pointlessly arguing with bots online made to offend you to spark unending engagement do you like superheroes how about hollywood drama new music the algorithm is here to feed you an endless supply of content based on what it assumes you want
5:33
have any of you noticed how sterile fiction has become how it caters to the lowest common denominator and follows the same template over and over again how music is the same bland seemingly created in a lab song over and over again
5:47
there is a reason for all of this algorithms and computer programs have been manufacturing content now for at least a decade that we know of
7:06
if you talk about the wrong thing your video gets demonetized if you say the wrong thing your video gets removed you can speak freely as long as you’re okay with being suppressed in the algorithm and no one sees your content the views the clicks the growth on youtube it’s all nonsense
7:33
it’s all fake say the right things and push the right content and you’ll succeed you go with the way the wind is blowing but if you stand in the face of that wind you’ll be standing there alone with 20 views
7:47
look at almost any channel you subscribe to and take a look at their views individuals are being pushed away in favor of corporate news corporate music and safe and inoffensive content that makes money
8:00
another creepy angle regarding youtube and other forms of media are deep fakes not only can computers and ai replicate faces accurately but now voices as well
8:23
fake people fake comments fake faces fake articles it’s terrifying how much of the internet is actually real people events news so many things could be completely fictional and i mean honestly how would we know
9:30
by the time the truth comes out the internet has moved on to whatever the next objective is by that future point almost no one cares anymore and the facts get moved off of search engines and pushed into unfindable parts of the internet
9:50
here’s another interesting thing you yourself can witness the internet on your smartphone is not the same as the internet on your pc try it out for yourself go to any popular website with a lot of traffic and spend a few days randomly checking the same thing from your pc and your smartphone you’ll notice from time to time that what you see on one device is completely different from the other entire threads can play out differently sometimes you’ll see different comments different like to dislike ratios on comments all kinds of weird anomalies you’d only notice because you’re coming at it from two different places i’m sure a lot of you have experienced the case of trying to find that one comment that you really liked and never being able to find it again
10:34
the argument for algorithms is that it helps us find what we want to see and caters to our likes and dislikes that doesn’t sound so bad right but i don’t buy that for a second because for years and years the argument was that different algorithms for different people don’t exist it isn’t real what are you talking about well to prove that algorithms do exist now it’s widely accepted as a real thing and spun as a positive but that isn’t necessarily true either the algorithm is there to keep you engaged and hooked on websites and apps for longer to accurately collect your likes and dislikes and do whatever it takes to keep your eyes glued to the screen and your wallet spending money if you linger too long on a certain thread or a video the algorithm will recommend more like it if you argue online the algorithm will find and create more incendiary posts to rile you up and keep you engaged if you didn’t already know it you are the product being manipulated and used and ai will do anything to keep you there
11:32
what is right what is wrong what is allowed what is not it’s a vicious cycle that weeds out dissent and critique nuance isn’t allowed i don’t necessarily mean from a political standpoint although i can’t completely disregard this angle so whether you’re right-leaning or left-leaning or something else suppression is a real thing for all sides discussion and understanding aren’t good for business there is a small overton window of a loud discourse and if you stray outside of that window everything is done to squash you or hide you away
12:37
ai and algorithms are used to push public opinion world news is pushed only by a handful of specific people carefully selected and manicured for you for every hot button issue there is a deliberate and more often than not manufactured angle which is going to be pushed towards you to keep you fighting rather than collectively coming together
12:56
let’s briefly talk about the recently ended conflict the fact of the matter is that no matter what time we left that country it was going to collapse 10 years ago today or 10 years from now this is a fact but they don’t want that to be a fact obviously the powers that be wanted us to stay there indefinitely because it is so lucrative there are so many natural resources to pillage and the money made by defense contractors was so great we gotta stay there forever thankfully public opinion was against this people were tired of it and just wanted it to end americans need help over here not more endless nonsense thousands miles away
13:32
now notice how the dynamic shifted when the pullout started every major news organization went into overdrive doing everything they could to get back in every news channel every website every major influencer on twitter and facebook and instagram any person that stood out there saying hey this is a good thing bring them home was crushed by an overwhelming majority online saying the opposite
14:19
when there is a narrative or an angle they want they are going to do everything to get it
14:31
let’s talk more about social media there is a reward and punishment system built in to push things in certain directions for example look at reddit i have joked for years and years that reddit is a hive of mine now that this theory has come along that joke seems to be a lot less funny and a lot more realistic simply based upon a like or dislike ratio reddit can push up what it deems correct and push down what it deems incorrect
14:54
then you have bots spamming to derail conversations on subjects they don’t want discussed and dividing and conquering on real issues to break down any progress that could be made
15:03
it’s a psychological game being played on everyone you want more upvotes and to get them you make sure you say the stuff that’s going to get pushed up don’t rock the boat follow the trends say agreeable things avoid disagreeable things or challenging topics the obvious point of reddit having a point-based system is to make the points go up this system discourages you from saying things that will make your points go down you only want your points to go up
15:27
up do you see the problem i’m not even that much of a contrarian but the first thing that i do when i check out an interesting reddit thread is to sort by controversial because it feels so much more human i want to read responses from people with different opinions not so much to get mad or to argue with others but to have my beliefs challenged i find it ridiculous that i have to dig so deeply to find this kind of stuff that’s why so many places on the internet feel like echo chambers have repeated ideas and thoughts i don’t want to be reassured that i’m correct i want to be challenged repeatedly so i can either strengthen my perspective or change it if necessary
16:03
another social media i’d love to talk about is twitter what twitter does is they place people in rooms and you don’t know what room you’re in or how you got there but you’re there you can’t escape from these rooms or have a way of checking to see which room you’re in or who else is in there with you upon learning this you might think that the goal of these rooms is to lock you in with other people similar to you but in fact the goal is to generate high intensity emotional responses like outrage or humor swelling up your emotional state is more likely to get you to stay on these sites for longer have more interactions and allow them to collect more data on you to be sold or manipulated by trapping us in these invisible rooms you are more likely to see things you disagree with but only to a certain extent you will not have to actually face a detailed counterpoint to your argument only a brief and complete summary maximized for high intensity emotion
16:52
you see the point of twitter isn’t to find common ground or debate the issues it’s to misinterpret and argue and get mad and waste time and energy while they collect data on you and throw ads in your face twitter does this by imposing an overly strict 240 character limit per tweet to make it physically impossible to discuss complex ideas in such a small space so conversations naturally devolve into insults there’s a reason the country feels so divided right now and it’s all intentional
17:22
look at facebook it’s a well of content thrown at you just to rile you up and support your pre-existing beliefs are you mad about this well here is more stuff to get mad about are you worried about this well here are more things to worry about do you love cats or dogs aren’t they great well this really bad thing happened to one of them you better stay engaged and keep watching your emotions don’t matter at all to us buy the stuff argue a bunch and keep isolating yourself from other humans because it makes you less powerful
17:52
so how much of the internet is fake studies suggest that less than sixty percent of web traffic is human that’s right sixty 60 according to researchers some years a healthy majority of them are mostly bots for a period of time in 2013 the new york times reported that half of youtube traffic was bots masquerading as people a portion so high that employees feared an inflection point would happen meaning youtube systems for detecting fraudulent traffic would begin to regard bot traffic as real and human traffic they even have a name for this hypothetical event it’s called the inversion remember this was all the way back in 2013 so it’s not a stretch in the slightest to assume that the threshold of bot traffic has been met and surpassed meaning that the internet is for the most part filled with non-living voices it really puts it in perspective how outnumbered we are compared to bots
19:48
darpa the defense advanced research projects agency is a research and development agency of the united states department of defense and is responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military
20:01
darpa had a program called lifelog and its goal was exactly that to log one’s entire life lifelog aimed to compile a massive electronic database of every activity and relationship a person engages in this was to include credit card purchases websites visited the content of telephone calls and emails sent and received faxes postal mail sent and received instant messages sent and received books and magazines read television viewing habits and radio selections physical locations recorded by wearable gps sensors and even biomedical data captured through wearable sensors the point of collecting all this data on everyone was to identify preferences plans goals and markers of intentionality
20:43
another of darpa’s goals for life log had a predictive function it sought to quote find meaningful patterns in the timeline to infer the user’s routines habits and relationships with other people organizations places and objects and to exploit these patterns to ease its task
21:00
sounds absolutely terrifying correct well lucky for us it was shut down february 4th 2004 over criticism from civil libertarians concerning the privacy implications of such a system interestingly though on that exact same day february 4th 2004 a small and little known website at the time launched called facebook no i’m not joking not in the slightest the exact same day that they shut down life log facebook started
21:46
once you learn all that it makes you look back at all those news stories that you heard over the years of facebook selling user information to other companies and uh all this stuff seems pretty obvious now we’ve been played ladies and gentlemen then you had those nsa leaks years ago that the government was in fact spying on all of us and when you add up all these pieces it’s easy to see that this is a massive puzzle and we simply don’t have all the pieces
22:20
the us government is engaging in an artificial intelligence powered gas lighting of the entire world population
22:35
it’s a positive feedback loop a stick and carrot approach say and do the right thing get rewarded say and do the wrong thing get artificially suppressed this way the narrative can be strung along in whatever way a corporation or government pleases why debate and discuss ideas and plan for progress when we can instead yell about stupid pointless culture war nonsense just think about it the internet is the fastest way to retrieve absorb and share information of course it was going to eventually be manipulated and contorted into what it is today
23:06
nowadays everyone is too cowardly to have an opinion that clashes with what is deemed acceptable within the overton window artificial trends created by who knows what drive the daily narrative then we get drawn into that by an overwhelming human obsession with being a part of the conversation if you’re not a part of it you feel left out and if you play it safe and you go with the flow well you feel validated and a part of something it’s human psychology and sociology used against us
23:33
in this way the internet and social media which was supposed to democratize media by allowing users to create whatever content they wanted has instead been hijacked by the powerful what was meant to be a communal space for growth and knowledge has turned into a battleground of the ignorant and uninformed endlessly attacking each other over pointless convictions
23:52
the advantage that bots have over us is that they can create an opinion and repeat it and support it over and over again they are faster than us there are more of them than us not to mention the positive feedback given to them and us for repeating their arguments think about it we can’t convince them to change their minds because they don’t have minds they are programmed to behave a certain way and do a certain goal they are a monolith with a focused goal we are fractured humans with minds that can oftentimes be changed if nine out of ten people say that you’re wrong most people can’t handle that kind of pressure so they cave in and they join the other nine this is human nature it’s nothing to be ashamed of but it is being used against us most people don’t want to be the odd one out or the person that rocks the boat this is what the dead internet is today
27:02
even if we disagree with each other over certain things we need to realize that 99 of that noise is a distraction we can overcome small differences everything doesn’t have to be a fight everything isn’t a life or death struggle like frauds on the internet try to make it out to be we don’t need to separate and segregate ourselves into smaller and smaller groups just to infight the more we do that the less power we all have if we want to change things we have to realize that we are all in this together and the further we grow apart from one another the chance of us coming together for positive change gets smaller and smaller and they win