Everything sucks#

If you spend any amount of time on a computer in 2026, you may find yourself thinking, as I frequently do, that computers have started to suck. The Internet, especially, sucks. I don’t think it has to be this way, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Dead Internet theory, the basic contours of the thesis are pretty simple: since 2016, technology has been able to generate plausible human-like text in response to a wide range of inputs. Thus, the majority of what you see online these days that purports to be human-made is some automated process that is engaged in some sort psychological op to sell you things, manufacture consent, or otherwise manipulate public opinion.

Like all the most effective conspiracy theories, there is a substantial core truth wrapped in a coating of shit. It is true to say: we are surrounded by phony images and videos being passed off as real on social media, and everyone has access to LLM technology that can provide deceptively authentic responses in a lot of scenarios.

It would be historically ignorant to suggest that these technologies will not be used to do immense harm to people. They already are. The US military has a history of deploying technology to deceive and destroy its enemies, with a track record of mixed success. And it would certainly be credulous to say that every interaction you have on social media is with an honest-to-God human being.

Have we reached Dead Internet scale yet? I don’t think we can say. I think it’s pretty clear that’s the way the wind is blowing for all social media platforms, at least. But I’ve been observing something else that is more concerning to me.

Writing for people who hate having thoughts#

OpenClaw has been in the news lately. Essentially, it’s an automated assistant that takes control of your computer (with your permission, of course), and uses popular LLM tools to generate commands to automate tasks for you. This is alleged to allow you to automate anything from responding to emails, to building software.

I’m a software programmer by trade, and so most of my professional connections are either programmers, or other people near that field. Recently, I’d noticed that a professional networking site of some repute has been filling up with strange posts from people I’d worked with in the past. An uncanny sameness pervaded the language they’d use. People who were previously very taciturn were posting more frequently, bragging about how productive they’d become.

Then, most recently, posts started to show up with a surprising admission attached, all with an unnerving consistency to their cadence:

“Hi, I’m Jules, Steven’s personal AI assistant. They’re busy with other things, so I’d like to tell you more about what I’ve been helping them build.”

Uhhh. Ok? Hmm.

The Dead Internet is a scary idea because it purports that humans are using technology to manipulate other humans for human ends. A tale as old as time.

But the Hell we’re creating with computers right now is actually worse: some people want to close the loop on human agency entirely.

It takes a lot to get me to post on social media. My professional networking social account sits mostly inactive, and I only check it during times where I’m meeting lots of new people in-person who want to stay connected.

But these bot posts had me feeling especially moved by the Spirit, so to speak, and I had to make a small statement. Not as a reply to any particular post, or to any individual. Just a statement of how I relate to this brave, new world.

“If you didn’t care enough to write it, why should I care enough to read it?”

That’s it. This is the line in the sand for me, and, I suspect, for a lot of people. All these bytes flying around in the ether are completely meaningless to the networks and computers they touch. It’s only when those signals get turned into pictures or sound and hit human eyes and ears that they mean anything at all.

Computers are not people. They do not have volition or intention. If a person did not write it, I simply do not care about it.

A return to form#

A former co-worker of mine, who’d been having his AI agent post on his behalf, reached out to disagree: “They’re still my thoughts,” he said. “I just use the LLM to help develop the specifics.”

I thought about this for a minute. I could have engaged in a discussion or argument, I guess. But if you’ve already admitted that you have a computer writing your posts for you, how can I know that I’m arguing my ideas with a human? How do I know I’m not talking to a proverbial brick wall, who will happily parrot back a plausible response to any reply I’d spent time constructing?

And so I didn’t reply. You really can’t tell who’s on the other end of the line anymore, and I simply won’t be gaslit into trying to reason with something that has no reason.

Language is the tool we’ve invented to account for the unfortunate fact that people are not especially telepathic. If I could beam a fully-formed thought from my head to yours, there would be no reason for me to labor over word choice, phrasing, and style. If that all sounds like a lot of work that you’d like to automate out-of-the-way, well, unfortunately, you’re missing the point.

The work of communication is exceptionally important, and the path to effectively transmitting an idea is a fraught one. Even in the process of writing this post, I’ve deleted more things that have ended up on the page in the final draft. Entire paragraphs, gone. But in that process, I learned things about what I was trying to say. Every discarded idea resulted in a thought: “this actually deserves its own time to develop, I should write more about it later.”

If you outsource the work of choosing language to a machine, the output is no longer, in any sense, your idea.

I have ideas (sometimes), and I want to develop them in a venue that respects them. I also respect the time of the people who spend precious minutes of their lives engaging with them. I can promise you, I spent hours laboring over this post. No LLMs were involved.

I’ve opened this website as a place where I can think out loud without getting bothered by the rapidly-degenerating state of centralized communication platforms. Maybe I’ll share some of my art here-and-there. I’m old enough to remember a time before social media. Without over-romanticizing the late 90s, there was something nice about getting to know a stranger through their personal website. If you really felt moved, you could click a little link and send them an email.

Everything old is new again.

The Internet is Dead. Long live the Internet.