#its fair to be mad at ai art clogging up google search results and things like that

[applejuiceyjuice-art]

i’m replying to this on my personal blog because i do not want to address this on the cloutchase blog. normally, we would delete an ask like this, but it bothers me too much personally.

it sounds like your brother is subscribed to “dead internet theory” which is a fringe conspiracy theory and total doomer talk. it basically proposes that the internet "died" in 2016/2017, and is or will be only made of bots that are generating content for other bots to engage with eternally, and that bot content makes up a majority of the internet in order to manipulate people. it is hyperbolic, using language like "everything online is generated by a bot and you are alone."

idk where he got the idea that it started with discord users, and we aren’t just going to take this information as fact for the sake of making content for our silly website gijinkas. it would be incredibly depressing and irresponsible of us to spread potentially dangerous conspiracy information like this, even if we somehow twisted it into the form of a joke (which we can't). cloutchase is moreso a celebration of the unique environment of the internet. (REMINDER: these are just funny ocs, and while there are serious conversations to be had surrounding actual problems with these sites, cloutchase is NOT the space to be doing so. read the FAQ.)

people believe in this theory because it “feels” true, the internet now feels fake and algorithmically produced and that nobody here is a real person. that’s why many people have nostalgia for “old internet,” where we remember a time where everything was seemingly user run.

but really the main difference between old internet and new internet is commercialization. inevitably, websites grew into businesses and businesses must generate profit. algorithms, advertisements, and ai are much more prominent than ever, flagging algorithms with human bias censor actual people, and so on. seeing and experiencing these things makes it kinda feel like nothing matters or whatever.

what’s actually important to YOUR experience online is asking this: is the majority of content you engage with generated by bots? no!!! you make it your own! the internet is massive, but we still find each other!!! there are REAL people behind this project and receiving your messages. we read everything, you know. WE aren't bots.

bots have always been around the internet, it isn’t a new thing. sure, we didn’t have sophisticated ai generation back then, but spam bots have always existed. malware spread through bots, some ARE bots. in some far off circles of the internet now, there are content farms and viewbotting, but here we are, meeting on this tumblr blog.

the internet will only die when its users decide to stop using it. is this not unlike the y2k scare?

#unreality #i think #do not send us asks like this #i will probably delete this later #i didnt mention this in the post but there are hints of truth in the dead internet theory #its fair to be mad at ai art clogging up google search results and things like that #but there are ways to curate your internet experience and that is really what im tryna say. people make solutions and push back #also viruses are not as threatening anymore because we have improved cybersecurity and 40 years of progress on accessibility #most people now only use a few select popular websites and don't have to worry about protecting themselves from viruses even tho they shoul #if you do get a trojan horse or anything it is far worse than any ai slop you might stumble across now