By skyforbes 
The internet is not dead, we’re just lynching it
When I first read about the Dead Internet Theory, I thought it made so much sense that once chatbots, generative AI systems, and then-unimaginable silicon monsters crossed the Uncanny Valley and learned to write and talk like humans, we would inevitably inhabit a dead morass of counterfeit digital personas. It never occurred to me that the process would be gradual and unequal; that some people — most people — would suffer in silence, unknowingly enduring a punishment meant for the damned in purgatory, while a few would be forced to witness the grotesque spectacle. It never occurred to me that the internet would be tortured before it died. It never occurred to me (and only now I see how mistaken I was) that well before AI’s mannerisms were invisible, our loved ones — partners, friends, family, colleagues — would fall for it.
I’m not afraid of the Dead Internet Theory; it assumes awareness on the reader’s part: you know the internet is dead, you know you’re surrounded by a soulless void and matrix multipliers, you know you’ve been turned into a solipsist (by whom, you ask; no one answers). You watch the aftermath of the disaster dispassionately, in the distance, like the astronomer who captures a star collapsing into a supernova or the fisherman who sees the storm claim the ships in…