According to the theory, the internet is now dominated by machine intelligence — content is generated by robots, organized by algorithms and human interaction is consciously marginalized as an uncontrollable phenomenon. We, as human beings, are already just guests there — if we manage to successfully prove to CAPTCHA that we are not robots. But what if CAPTCHA's actual function is the opposite of what we think? Yes, it's a security mechanism — but what if its true purpose is to immediately identify and separate "foreign organisms" that don't belong on the internet? You prove you're human, and you're tagged: from then on, your activity is monitored by machines. Traces of human activity still remain on the internet, but the balance of power is shifting dramatically.

The death of the internet was dated to around 2016-2017, a notion that had been simmering in the blogosphere before breaking into the mainstream with The Atlantic's 2021 article titled "Maybe You Missed It, but the Internet 'Died' Five Years Ago." Now it's been about another five years since that piece, and the arguments in favor of a "dead internet" keep piling up — text generators can now produce an overwhelming volume of content, AI art is spreading explosively and web bots run all kinds of scams, turning internet browsing into an experience not unlike wandering through a bazaar in a banana republic with an especially demanding communication style. One might cling to the illusion that because it all happens in a virtual world, it isn't real — but countless unfortunate souls would disagree. They've found themselves lured into message threads that start with, "Hi, could you share your phone number?" and end swiftly with a request for their PIN2 code. For now, it's still humans behind these efforts, pretending to be other humans. But the moment machines learn how to impersonate those other humans, online seduction will shift into a whole new gear.

Even the more tech-wary citizen finds digital chaos creeping into their life one way or another — especially, as of late, through social media. If the ultimate goal of the tech-reptiles in charge is total control over the world, then sowing confusion is a logical and necessary step in building the conditions to achieve it. In my feeds, familiar faces have been almost entirely replaced by strangers, and bot-generated posts are now competing with human language on equal footing. In the film world, it has become nearly impossible to search for information about upcoming major releases — nearly everything is fake, from movie stills to trailers, not to mention news or posters.

In the near future, humanity will abandon the internet. It will become a wasteland of machine-forged digital junk — a post-apocalyptic cyber-desert where robots scam each other on Facebook Marketplace using preprogrammed scripts and tirelessly scour dating sites 24/7 in search of love, typing into the night: "Do you like my body?"

Entropy expands. We hit "like."

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