I’m not ashamed and am self aware enough to say I am a very chronically online person.
I am a frequenter of Tiktok and Instagram reels, I love a good reference, and short form content just speaks to my little ADD brain.
Most of my feed is about DC comics and delicious edits of Robert Pattinson, and that’s the way I like it, but often I’ll get a curveball that makes me think, and I make the awful decision to check the comment section and no longer like it.
For example, I was doomscrolling one day, and I stumbled upon a video of a literal child, no more than like 11 or 12 years old, doing a silly little video singing and just being a cringey child.
I thought it was cute and reminded me of the type of videos me and my friends would make when we were kids on my childhood iPad. Being a kid is inherently cringey, so it made me jolly to see kids are still cringe.
However, the comments did not share the same sentiment as me.
As I scrolled, I became more upset. How could people feel such an intense hatred for a random child on their phone? And how unemployed are they?
It made me wonder how these people could even be real, and if, perhaps, they aren’t. I really hope they aren’t.
For my peace of mind, I choose to believe a mass amount of hate comments, whether it be telling a child to off themselves because they’re simply expressing themselves, or those spam heart comments on Ken Paxton’s AI ads, are just simply bots and evidence of the dead internet theory.
The dead internet theory is a theory that the internet is no longer mostly human users, but rather populated by bots and AI-generated fake accounts.
I remember hearing about the theory as a kid, but was probably too busy digging holes in my yard or making my dolls have a torrid divorce to care.
But, I also grew up when the internet was still maturing. I was literally born the same year as the iPhone. Me and the internet are practically siblings.
When I was little, I watched whatever had Elsa from “Frozen” in it, which did definitely lead me to witness videos that were very concerning for a 6-year-old, but at least I had an idea of what I was watching.
The shift to TikTok, coming with not being able to choose what’s going to appear next, leads me to some very strange corners of the internet and simply places I don’t want to be and opinions I don’t want to hear.
It seems all I ever read on TikTok is draining amounts of negativity and chains of people arguing in the comments, or random comments that are strings of emojis.
It just makes me wonder at what point not being compelled to comment on everything we see disappeared.
Even in completely harmless videos about cooking or some new gadget, there’s a comment with thousands of likes saying, “Well I can’t eat gluten” or, “What if I don’t have thumbs?” It just hurts my head.
At this point, I think it would be a relief to know the internet isn’t even real people anymore, and is just bots trying to elicit a reaction from people for engagement, so I can retain my belief in humanity.
I know the whole point of the internet and social media is that people can connect and share varying opinions, but when it’s become an echo chamber of negativity, do I even want to know what other people are thinking?
After a long day of attempting to be an adult and maintaining relationships, I think myself and others would rather see anything else other than more people complain or be evil online.
With how polluted social media is, it’s kind of become a form of exposure therapy for me. I got so tired of doomscrolling and having downtime, I got a job, and now I’m writing this.
