Any time passed was better. As one gets older, it is very difficult not to be invaded by nostalgia and longing for youth, thinking that the world is worse now than it was before (or ever). It happens with musical styles, cinema, fashion or, why not, also with the Internet itself.
Surely if you are old enough, you remember what the website was like before, and sometimes you will compare it with how it was now.
But there are those who go further. According to a recurring conspiracy theory, the Internet really died back in 2016. What does this really mean and why are there people who absolutely believe it?
Internet died in 2016
According to a surprising theory called “Dead Internet Theory: Most of the Internet is Fake”, the Internet died back in 2016. Well , you might ask, so what do we have today? According to its defenders, It is AI, bots and influencers who are in control.
That is to say, according to this reflection, the Internet stopped being a form of spontaneous communication (let’s call it that) and became a kind of great showcase in which only a few manage everything. As usually happens, those in charge, of course, be they politicians or large companies. Only in this case, they would pull the strings through bots, AIs and influencers.
The most surprising thing about the theory would consist precisely of a basic idea: What you think is controlled by humans is actually controlled almost entirely by machines., whether these are bots or artificial intelligence, serving specific interests, telling you how to think, act and live. They mainly manipulate you, wow.
The defenders of this idea, starting with its creator, a user called IlluminatiPirate, even dare to go one step further and point out a specific date on which the change was carried out: the year 2016. Although sometimes it is given a little more margin on the matter and 2017 is pointed out. In any case, it has been more than five years since we have been living a virtual lie.
Conspiracy splashes the Internet
The truth is that it is difficult to believe all these arguments, especially for those of us who make our living mainly interacting with this medium. There is no doubt that the Internet has changedand also that currently many contents are sponsored, in addition to the fact that there are some generalized lines of thought.
The number of bots has also grown in many ways. These are realities that can hardly be disputed. The network itself has changed since the times when thematic websites, forums, chats or even the remembered Messenger were the predominant fashion. The time before social networks, Oh. Depending on who you ask, for better or worse.
But from there to affirming that the majority of people who surf, swarm on networks and so on is not real, there is an abyss. Still, the theory is there, like so many other conspiracy theories. And even if you don’t believe it, it doesn’t hurt, sometimes, to think about why it could have happened.
