The Dead Internet Theory is a conspiracy theory that, when we take the conspiracy theory out of it, ceases to be an unrealistic or far-fetched idea, and starts to be very obvious. Like many theories (such as the Anthropic principle), it has strong and weak forms. The strong form is a variant on the great conundrum of stoner epistemology: what if everyone else in the world is a robot, dude? The weak version is that the internet sure has changed, hasn't it?
I don't believe that I am the single remaining internet user of flesh and blood in the world. This is an application of the Copernican Principle: I am probably, in general, average. Since I am not a robot, most people aren't robots, either. This is not ironclad, but it makes sense. But lets go on to a weaker idea: the internet has changed. Of course it has, but lets talk about how it has changed, and in what sense that makes it "dead".
Let me start with an example: Instagram. Ten or a dozen years ago, there was a joke/stereotype going around about Instagram: it was full of urban millenials photographing their trendy lunches (perhaps avocado toast) with filters. Haha, we said, these millenials should know that no-one cares about the minutiae of their daily lives. And while the entire thing about lunch was an exaggeration, the fact was that was what Instagram was exactly for: showing little slice of life vignettes of people going about their normal life. A bit embellished, but it was a way for peers to share their lives with each other. It was about real life. And as a member of Instagram, you got to define what real life is. And then, slowly, Instagram changed. Sports teams and brands and celebrities and advocacy organizations and other institutions and entities started taking over Instagram. Now, when I check my feed, I have to scroll through sponsored content to find real people. They are still there, and they are still doing the same thing, but it is a footnote to the main focus.
This is one example, but if I had to sum it up, I would say that the internet as we knew it is "dead", because users are no longer participants, but an audience.
Not only that, but users have become an audience of some type of recursive activity that mimics real human reactions---but is centered somewhere else entirely. An example would be a few months ago, when singer Taylor Swift started dating football player Travis Kelce, and this was somehow tied in with larger political issues. Conservatives were aghast that a singer should date an athlete and go to the Superbowl...or were they? Because this supposed tempest in a teapot was something I only heard about second hand, as my liberal friends wondered why conservatives were so up in arms about something so minor. But the question was...were they? I am sure that some were, but the truth it, it became two mirrors reflecting each other, people getting upset about other people's supposed reactions to a non-event, ad infinitum. What do real people think about Taylor Swift showing up at the Superbowl? Probably very little. But there almost feels to be a requirement to have opinions or feelings about these things, and what is really on our mind and vital to us gets covered up by the expectations of what other people are thinking about. Even though, of course, they aren't, until they think we are.
So the internet is dead, in that we are not the means of production of the internet. We are consumers. The topics and activity and attention of the internet are created somewhere over the horizon, and we only receive news and second hand goods, to alter and pass around and trade. But we are no longer part of the living internet.
I mean, unless we are on E2 and creating content and wrestling with trying to express ourselves and exploring nuance through text, but that is obviously a silly thing to be doing in 2024.