Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noah.
Speaker 3: They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Paul Mission controlled tickets. Most importantly, you are here,
Speaker 3: and that makes this the stuff they don't want you
Speaker 3: to know. Big, big thanks to the Internet for making
Speaker 3: our show possible.
Speaker 4: Ah, the Internet, you love it, you hate it, you
Speaker 4: can't really escape it. Then you pointed out that we're
Speaker 4: all kind of we're all kind of children of the Internet,
Speaker 4: and that we came up during the earliest of internets.
Speaker 4: I don't know about you guys. Did you guys have
Speaker 4: like rich friends with the doctor parents who had like
Speaker 4: Prodigy and the earliest versions of the Internet, like when.
Speaker 3: It was still Scrihindo modem.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, certainly a flex at the time. I didn't
Speaker 4: get a proper Internet connection until the early you know,
Speaker 4: aim day is like a America Online, which is probably
Speaker 4: in like maybe nineteen ninety three issue.
Speaker 3: I loved it, like, hey, I need another CD. I'm
Speaker 3: running out of internet.
Speaker 4: Right those Yeah, I remember back. I remember hell back
Speaker 4: when it was floppies, they would send them the mail.
Speaker 3: We are, as we're mentioning here, we are some of
Speaker 3: the folks who lived through the Great Divide, right, the
Speaker 3: rise of the Internet, and we existed pre Internet. So
Speaker 3: like many of us listening tonight, we have witnessed amazing
Speaker 3: fundamental changes in the world. And as we record this evening,
Speaker 3: you can, in theory, contact anyone across the planet within
Speaker 3: the space of seconds. It's amazing. It's technolog that never
Speaker 3: existed before. We still don't know whether humanity is prepared
Speaker 3: for it. But what if this online wonderland is already
Speaker 3: past humanity? This is the dead Internet theory. Here are
Speaker 3: the facts we've talked about the origin of the Internet.
Speaker 3: We're very fortunate to be friends with Jonathan Strickland, who's
Speaker 3: covered it extensively in shows like Tech Stuff. But when
Speaker 3: you think about it, the Internet is only a natural
Speaker 3: iteration of this fundamental drive.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: People have always wanted to talk with each other. They're gregarious.
Speaker 4: Do you guys remember a time where it just still
Speaker 4: seemed so novel to be able to chat with somebody
Speaker 4: in a chat room from across the country in real time.
Speaker 4: God forbids send a picture dare we say a video
Speaker 4: that didn't come so much later? Yeah, DSL is just
Speaker 4: a sejo. Do you guys remember that feeling of this
Speaker 4: being so exciting and you getting your first connection and
Speaker 4: like really like, you know, kind of dipping your toes
Speaker 4: in the Internet for the first time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I think, at least if I recall correctly
Speaker 2: my mind at that time as a kid, I was
Speaker 2: not that excited with that stuff. I wanted to go
Speaker 2: ride bikes. I wanted to be outside still because my
Speaker 2: pre internet, you know, mine still existed, so funny. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so like as it's emerging, it's like, oh, this is
Speaker 2: neat then, Neto, but not. I just couldn't imagine that
Speaker 2: we would ever get here.
Speaker 3: Like at that time, it wasn't your number one aspiration
Speaker 3: as a kid when it came to what to do
Speaker 3: with your free time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, dude, maybe I can pull another Shiven Dragon in
Speaker 2: this fifth edition Magic Passion I'm opening right now.
Speaker 4: And then Magic hit the Internet and all that's were off.
Speaker 3: I mean, look at it. When we're talking about the Internet,
Speaker 3: we're talking about something thematically related to previous communication efforts,
Speaker 3: the telephone, the radio, the telegraph, on pigeons, semaphore, smoke signals, ravens.
Speaker 3: So it's it's not too surprising that humans eventually came
Speaker 3: up with the Internet. But I think it may surprise
Speaker 3: some of us to learn that the modern Internet, the
Speaker 3: reason it is here is pretty much due to the
Speaker 3: Cold War.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Cold War drove a lot of advancements and communications technology.
Speaker 4: The Sputnik satellite launch, it was a big driver for
Speaker 4: us to play a little catch up here in the
Speaker 4: good old US of a. Western scientists and the military personnel,
Speaker 4: the boffins, as you say, Ben, were super concerned that
Speaker 4: we were being surpassed technologically by the USSR and that
Speaker 4: they might launch some sort of massive attack on our
Speaker 4: communications infrastructure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the U has long been aware that infrastructure is
Speaker 3: one of the critical vulnerabilities, right, Like we talked recently
Speaker 3: about how various domestic terrorists might attack water treatment areas
Speaker 3: or power stations. But even the telephone system of the
Speaker 3: US at this time could have could have been easily
Speaker 3: crippled by the right kind of well placed attacks, and
Speaker 3: this would effectively blind the US. It would not have
Speaker 3: the ability to communicate across long distances. So in nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty two, this guy named JC R. Licklider Licklider, that's
Speaker 3: his real name, he pitched this crazy idea. He said, Hey, guys,
Speaker 3: what if we could build a galactic network of computers
Speaker 3: that could talk to each other?
Speaker 4: Galactic network? That sounds a bad at space age as
Speaker 4: it gets guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And he wasn't a rube. He wasn't just some
Speaker 3: do who walked into, you know, a boardroom and said
Speaker 3: I got a pitch. He worked for MIT and for ARPA.
Speaker 3: It was his job to imagine crazy things to try
Speaker 3: to tackle this problem of the Cold War. And he said,
Speaker 3: if we could do something like this, then an attack
Speaker 3: on the netian's telephone structure won't be as catastrophic. It'll
Speaker 3: still be bad, but we'll still be able to communicate.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean, NOORAD and DC can somehow
Speaker 3: still talk with each other.
Speaker 4: But how do we build it? Right? It's an idea.
Speaker 4: At this point then I've been a bit of a
Speaker 4: pie in the sky one. Although you know, we know
Speaker 4: the early Internet was based around existing telephonic infrastructure, hence
Speaker 4: the term like dial up and you know, having that
Speaker 4: horrible sound of connecting. This is kind of the same
Speaker 4: technology that was used to send faxes, which were very
Speaker 4: much a thing. It's just a way of you know,
Speaker 4: turning something into data, transmitting it over a telephone network,
Speaker 4: putting it back together on the other end.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. And MIT scientists later figured out the concept
Speaker 3: of packet switching. This is where you break a piece
Speaker 3: of data into chunks or packets and they all kind
Speaker 3: of find their own way from point A to point Z,
Speaker 3: and then they come back together beautifully. This led to
Speaker 3: the creation of what was called ARPA net, and then
Speaker 3: if you fast forward, ARPA met ARPA net excuse me
Speaker 3: sent its first message on October twenty ninth, nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 3: manifesting the Galactic Network a computer. The Internet was two
Speaker 3: computers at this point, one in UCLA and one in Stanford,
Speaker 3: and the UCLA computer sent a single word log in
Speaker 3: pretty cinematic right, But you know it didn't work at
Speaker 3: the single attempt just from one computer to another crash
Speaker 3: the network, so Stanford only got the first two letters
Speaker 3: of the message.
Speaker 4: Low, oh, dear, and behold. I'm sorry just to say
Speaker 4: this because I just was doing a quick cursory Google.
Speaker 4: Did you guys know that there's a proto version of
Speaker 4: the fax machine Alexander Bain's electric printing telegraph that was
Speaker 4: patented in eighteen forty three. That just blew my mind.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry. And some of this technology that we're talking
Speaker 4: about is super old, and obviously that was used sent
Speaker 4: to using radio waves and all of that stuff in
Speaker 4: the early days from you know, the Radio Corporation of
Speaker 4: America RCA. But now we're talking about sending things over
Speaker 4: these pre existing telephone networks.
Speaker 3: And shout out to Tim Berners Lee for the later
Speaker 3: creation of the Worldwide Web. Again, check out tech stuff
Speaker 3: which goes into this history and depth. For now, the
Speaker 3: important thing to remember is the Internet was, in a
Speaker 3: very real way founded by paranoia. Like any other technology,
Speaker 3: it's got no moral compass. Yeah, and that led to controversy.
Speaker 4: And now it just foments paranoia on the regular.
Speaker 2: Well, it was just about this, guys, Like we've talked
Speaker 2: about this before. But the primary, the primary form of communication.
Speaker 2: I guess the technology that's at play has for all
Speaker 2: time had such a shaping effect on everything on the
Speaker 2: human experience because what is either spoken about by mouth
Speaker 2: written down in a book or newspaper, said on the radio,
Speaker 2: scene on a television, as you go down that line,
Speaker 2: whatever that stuff is that's happening in that place that
Speaker 2: most people are bought into. Right again, if it's by
Speaker 2: mouth at first, that's like how the communication starts, and
Speaker 2: then they.
Speaker 4: Can start to read oral tradition, right, you know.
Speaker 2: But as it goes it really does shape the culture.
Speaker 2: And at some point, guys, we need to sit down
Speaker 2: and just talk about what the Internet did to like,
Speaker 2: to everything, to everything, because it really, like I keep
Speaker 2: I'm in that mind space now of a kid seeing
Speaker 2: the internet getting on for the first time and thinking
Speaker 2: about everything I knew and thought about was either taught
Speaker 2: to me in school or I watched on a television.
Speaker 2: And it was such a common thing for me to
Speaker 2: sit there and watch on a television and learn everything
Speaker 2: that I was learning.
Speaker 3: Or read a book, you know, to have a single
Speaker 3: source of information that you're paying attention to at a time.
Speaker 2: Well, but often I didn't read. I was one of
Speaker 2: those kids that was mostly in front of a television,
Speaker 2: either watching something or playing a game. So I just think,
Speaker 2: I wonder how many kids these days are not reading
Speaker 2: that much, but are just constantly have this connection to
Speaker 2: their the Internet whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm just saying like reading as in like the
Speaker 3: general I would put that in the same bucket of
Speaker 3: sitting down and doing the one thing right, suggesting through
Speaker 3: the one source. And now I believe that is less
Speaker 3: and less common because you know, like well, I saw
Speaker 3: a tweet a while back where someone said, do I meditate?
Speaker 3: I mean sort of sometimes I watch TV with my
Speaker 3: phone in the other room.
Speaker 4: That's the thing the Internet, and it's not just using
Speaker 4: the Internet. Streaming is basically the Internet, just in a
Speaker 4: different format. It's an inherently attention dividing medium. You know,
Speaker 4: even now, especially after the pandemic, people executives in Hollywood
Speaker 4: will say something isn't streamy enough, meaning that it's not
Speaker 4: They call it two screens. Something needs to be created
Speaker 4: with two screens in mind, because someone's always going to
Speaker 4: be watching the movie and also look into their phone,
Speaker 4: and if you can't grab them or keep their attention
Speaker 4: and let them know what the hell's going on in
Speaker 4: the movie pedantically, then yeah, it's obviously there are people
Speaker 4: that are you know, fighting that. But I just wanted
Speaker 4: to really quickly just read this incredible quote from David
Speaker 4: Bowie from an interview that he did in nineteen ninety
Speaker 4: nine with this dude, a BBC reporter or a presenter
Speaker 4: named Jeremy Paxman, talking about the Internet, and Bowie says,
Speaker 4: I don't think we've seen even the tip of the iceberg.
Speaker 4: I think the potential of what the Internet is going
Speaker 4: to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable.
Speaker 4: I think we're actually on the cusp of something exhilarating
Speaker 4: and terrifying, to which Paxsman says, well, it's just a tool, right,
Speaker 4: It's just a medium, and then Bowie says, no, no,
Speaker 4: it's not. It's an alien life form. Ninety nine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, many people are. Many people are arguing that, you know,
Speaker 3: the Internet is amazing. It's inherently controversial. You could argue too,
Speaker 3: to Boie's statement that the Internet is still protean, it
Speaker 3: has not reached its final form. I think that's fairly
Speaker 3: reasonable to say. But you know, it's riddled with crime.
Speaker 3: It enables what previous generations would rightly consider miracles like
Speaker 3: near claravoyance, the ability to communicate across vast distances, and
Speaker 3: access to a NYE infinite number of resources, some more
Speaker 3: reliable than others, and it led to the creation of
Speaker 3: social media, these platforms that leverage the spine of the
Speaker 3: Internet to create higher communities and for a lot of people,
Speaker 3: your primary means of engaging online is a mobile phone
Speaker 3: or a mobile phone via a social media app. Right,
Speaker 3: Like people say, oh, sometimes I Google stuff, but usually
Speaker 3: I'm on Instagram.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yea jse.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm not gonna lie. I'm absolutely part of.
Speaker 2: That set totally. I think. Just sorry, I feel like
Speaker 2: I didn't make my point. I was just trying to
Speaker 2: like wrap my head around something with you guys and
Speaker 2: get your input, cause I think when you're when you're
Speaker 2: imagining like a television show that was broadcast on CBS
Speaker 2: right back when television was the prime form of communication
Speaker 2: day and date kind of stuff. Right, Well, that's everybody
Speaker 2: getting the same information. If you've got a TV and
Speaker 2: that's the primary, the primary technology that's used, everybody gets that.
Speaker 2: Right then you move up to the Internet for a while,
Speaker 2: there are very specific places on the Internet you can
Speaker 2: go to get that information. If it's like if it's
Speaker 2: something like a book in order to like back in
Speaker 2: the day, if it was a best seller, that's probably
Speaker 2: you know, if not hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 2: thousands of people millions of people reading one book.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: But now if you look at the metrics for what
Speaker 2: you need to meet to become a best seller, it
Speaker 2: is you don't have to sell that many books, which
Speaker 2: is crazy to think about because just not that many
Speaker 2: people are absorbing their information that way. But with the Internet,
Speaker 2: it isn't just on a website somewhere that anybody can
Speaker 2: access if they want to. That website, if it's popular enough,
Speaker 2: gets linked, like you said, to all that social media
Speaker 2: that's generated, to blogs that then get generated. And it's
Speaker 2: one thing that now exists almost across the entirety of
Speaker 2: this network, This one thing or this you know, somebody
Speaker 2: famous dies, right, It would have been a radio announcement
Speaker 2: than a television special, right, And then now it's just
Speaker 2: the entirety of the Internet knows about it. And I
Speaker 2: just wonder, as we're going into today's episode to talk
Speaker 2: about this thing, this dead Internet theory, it's hard for
Speaker 2: me to imagine that we've morphed away from that somehow,
Speaker 2: from it is just an all encompassing awareness of things
Speaker 2: that occur, like events that occur in the world.
Speaker 4: Well, but it's also just like a store of the
Speaker 4: whole of human knowledge and history available kind of in
Speaker 4: one place. And that's why, you know, we're talking about
Speaker 4: our upbringing with the Internet versus like our kids, you know,
Speaker 4: gen Z or whatever and gen why they grew up
Speaker 4: with access to all of that information from day one,
Speaker 4: And that has to affect the development of a brain
Speaker 4: in a very interesting way and very interesting and terrifying ways.
Speaker 3: Perhaps deep learning is a skill, right, and it's something
Speaker 3: you have to practice. This is not by any This
Speaker 3: is not anybody saying, oh these whipper snappers these days.
Speaker 3: It's just the modes of learning have changed. You could
Speaker 3: argue they evolve. You could argue, now people tend to
Speaker 3: know a little bit about a lot of stuff as
Speaker 3: opposed to you know, knowing a little a heck of
Speaker 3: a lot about three things, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: Like in the days of you know, the days of print,
Speaker 3: when that was raining. But this, this could change the world.
Speaker 3: You know, the Internet is amazing. Everything we've talked about
Speaker 3: is true. If that is, there are still people online.
Speaker 3: And take a break for a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy. We sometimes call the Internet
Speaker 3: an echo chamber, right, and parts of it very much are.
Speaker 3: But what if it's such an echo chamber now that
Speaker 3: we've reached a point where human users are kind of
Speaker 3: a vestigial appendage minority stakeholders in a largely mostly automated conversation.
Speaker 3: That's the that's the kernel of the dead Internet theory,
Speaker 3: the idea that most online activity now is non human.
Speaker 4: Sort of like junk, right, like almost like detritus, you know,
Speaker 4: like if you think about spam, I guess, and just
Speaker 4: how if it is a thing that might work, then
Speaker 4: it will end up in your inbox, or it will
Speaker 4: end up in your textbox, or you will get a
Speaker 4: telephone call. Think about the Internet as just like a
Speaker 4: jug heap of that kind of stuff. Yeah. Sure, there's
Speaker 4: some wildlife crawling around, you know, people kind of poking
Speaker 4: in to check on what's going on, but a lot
Speaker 4: of it. And again I'm not proposing that this is
Speaker 4: completely accurate, but I do think there has to be
Speaker 4: a hell of a lot of this type of element
Speaker 4: out there.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: And as we're thinking about this, let's I don't want
Speaker 2: to buifurciate it. Too much or split it up too much,
Speaker 2: but think about it as social media is one thing, yes,
Speaker 2: news and blogs as like another thing. And then what
Speaker 2: would you guys, I know, there's got to be a
Speaker 2: third stream?
Speaker 3: Would be another one?
Speaker 2: Okay, because that's also in line places where information is distributed.
Speaker 4: Are there even websites exactly? You know, like we used
Speaker 4: to know them, you know, I mean it went from
Speaker 4: being called a website to being called a blog. And
Speaker 4: now I got to wonder, are the only actual websites
Speaker 4: quote unquote that I visit, like to do restaurant bookings.
Speaker 4: But even that, like Bumps, you out to an app
Speaker 4: which is sort of a social media platform in a way.
Speaker 4: So it's an interesting question. The category is that is
Speaker 4: you know, yeah.
Speaker 3: Agreed, And we know that we know that the Internet
Speaker 3: to that point, we know that it has kind of speciated, right.
Speaker 3: There are different bubbles or genres of Internet, and you
Speaker 3: may entirely, you may entirely define your experience by the
Speaker 3: on the quote unquote internet, just by going to the
Speaker 3: one thing you know, and sorry folks. Reddit also goes
Speaker 3: in the social media bucket. Reddit is social.
Speaker 4: Media, but it isn't the Internet really just the pipes,
Speaker 4: you know, just the the the way all of this
Speaker 4: stuff is delivered. It's all the Internet, right. I mean,
Speaker 4: you can differentiate the different platforms and the different kind
Speaker 4: of places you can spend your time, but all of
Speaker 4: these massive server farms and stuff, they're all feeding the
Speaker 4: same stuff.
Speaker 3: They all use the same spine. And the idea for
Speaker 3: the dead Internet theory is that across all of these
Speaker 3: let's call them sub genres or subspecies if you like,
Speaker 3: of Internet, across all of them, bots and automatically generated
Speaker 3: content are replacing humans or pushing humans out, and a
Speaker 3: lot of it, again, according to the theory, is designed
Speaker 3: to mimic the appearance of human activity to arrive at versimilitude,
Speaker 3: while at the same time minimizing your actual human interaction
Speaker 3: and then using that to manipulate the population of readers
Speaker 3: and users, which we know can happen. Is one thing
Speaker 3: I think we all find really interesting about this. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of well that part is true to these stories.
Speaker 3: According to the law here, which we're about to get into,
Speaker 3: this switch from a human Internet to a quote unquote
Speaker 3: dead Internet occurred sometime around twenty sixteen or twenty seventeen,
Speaker 3: and you can hear it being mentioned, or you can
Speaker 3: read it being mentioned out in the chans as far
Speaker 3: back as twenty ten four chan, wizard chan, so on.
Speaker 3: But we know it had probably been a subject of
Speaker 3: at least academic interest before people started talking about online.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, wizard chan, wizard say, is that a new
Speaker 4: flavor of chan? I'm not familiar with this particular cham.
Speaker 2: Well, but I don't know that, but tell us about
Speaker 2: it in a second. But just we should note there
Speaker 2: also that those are extremely sarcastic places on the interwebs, right,
Speaker 2: the chans like almost purposefully.
Speaker 4: Borderline set higher higher.
Speaker 2: But places are talking about that and noticing something, right,
Speaker 2: and then it almost becomes a joke in and of itself.
Speaker 2: And then a larger theory that I would argue guys
Speaker 2: starts to feel more and more real as it's you know,
Speaker 2: growing up to that twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, and then
Speaker 2: well we'll get to it, but twenty twenty one.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Wizard Chad is a website where people who I'm
Speaker 3: reading from wizchan dot org. Wizard Chan is a website
Speaker 3: where people who have no sexual experience can share their
Speaker 3: thoughts and interest as a virgin The names inspired by
Speaker 3: the wizard Beam, which refers to someone who's maintained his
Speaker 3: virginity past the age of thirty.
Speaker 4: Oh so it's an in cell message board.
Speaker 3: Basically, well, I'm not too familiar with I'd look if
Speaker 3: I'm totally poitantic speaking out out of school there.
Speaker 4: I apologize to any Wizard jan members, but I know
Speaker 4: the chance and at times had controversial Oh yeah, I
Speaker 4: have garnered controversy because of some pretty gnarly Internet culture
Speaker 4: that fester is.
Speaker 3: There, Yeah, yeah, radicallyation, extremism, and then also doing stuff
Speaker 3: for the nihilistic lulls, right, and we all remember those days.
Speaker 3: The most often cited source of dead Internet theory is
Speaker 3: usually going to be this thread by a user under
Speaker 3: the handle Illuminati Pirate. This guy gets cited in The
Speaker 3: Atlantic and The Intelligencer, in numerous scholarly works about dead
Speaker 3: Internet theory. Maybe we go to this Atlantic piece that
Speaker 3: was just fantastic written by a journalist named Caitlin Tiffany,
Speaker 3: and she sums it up very nicely.
Speaker 2: And this article, by the way, is one of the
Speaker 2: primary ones I think that exists on the Internet. If
Speaker 2: you search for this subject.
Speaker 4: There's one other one from Fast Company that's more of
Speaker 4: an editorial that I'd love to read a little bit
Speaker 4: from a little later. But this is I think a
Speaker 4: little bit more of a work of journalism, whereas the
Speaker 4: Fast Company wants a bit more of a you know,
Speaker 4: amusing but I think there's some really smart points. But yeah, man,
Speaker 4: you want to read this sure.
Speaker 2: Here is a quote from Tiffany in the Atlantic. The
Speaker 2: post suggests this is a post by Illuminati pirate that
Speaker 2: the Internet died in twenty sixteen or early twenty seventeen
Speaker 2: and that now it is quote this is a quote
Speaker 2: within the quote empty and devoid of people unquote, as
Speaker 2: well as quote entirely sterile unquote. The post suggests that
Speaker 2: the Internet died in twenty sixteen or early twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: and that now it is empty and devoid of people,
Speaker 2: as well as entirely sterile. Much of the supposedly human
Speaker 2: produced content you see online was actually created using AI.
Speaker 4: Again.
Speaker 2: This is back in like this a long time.
Speaker 4: Ago, don chat yeah, way prey, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Isn't that crazy? But go back in and was propagated
Speaker 2: by bots, possibly aided by a group of influencers on
Speaker 2: the payroll of various corporations that are in cohoots with
Speaker 2: the government. The conspiring group's intention is, of course, to
Speaker 2: control our thoughts and get us to purchase stuff.
Speaker 3: I mean, that doesn't seem too far from the truth.
Speaker 4: It doesn't.
Speaker 2: That's what they've always wanted.
Speaker 3: It's kind of just in my head. I think we're
Speaker 3: on the same page here, guys. In my head, this
Speaker 3: is kind of just a question of degree at that point,
Speaker 3: degree of extremity.
Speaker 4: Well, and to me, frankly, this Illuminati pirate, this whole
Speaker 4: you know screen here feels really prescient because what we're
Speaker 4: seeing now on the Internet and what is to come
Speaker 4: likely is going to much more closely resemble exactly this.
Speaker 4: We are on the cusp of this absolutely being the
Speaker 4: truth at that point, though probably not. But what a
Speaker 4: prescient prediction there.
Speaker 3: And it again, I would argue, it's a question of degree, right,
Speaker 3: rather than true falsity. He goes on, right, This is
Speaker 3: where it goes further right. He goes on and he says, look,
Speaker 3: we rarely interact with humans on the Internet, or we
Speaker 3: rarely see posts created by other actual people. And then
Speaker 3: he gets into this more philosophical thing and he's like,
Speaker 3: think about all these memes that are evolving Pepe the
Speaker 3: Frog and raptor Jesus and so on, these are evidence
Speaker 3: of an evolving AI life form. So he goes a
Speaker 3: little further than most people would agree with.
Speaker 4: Well, I think most people would probably also agree that
Speaker 4: what David Bowie was talking about as the Internet kind
Speaker 4: of creating a new organism, a new way of thinking.
Speaker 4: That these types of absurdist memes are a product of
Speaker 4: terminal onlineness that sort of creates these changes in people's
Speaker 4: brains that makes them look for the new thing that
Speaker 4: gets them, you know, for lack of a better term,
Speaker 4: kind of high. Right. It's like, oh, the old jokes
Speaker 4: don't work anymore because we have access to too much information.
Speaker 4: We got to make new stuff that is absolutely beyond,
Speaker 4: incomprehensibly absurd.
Speaker 3: I love I love forensic memes, man, I love I
Speaker 3: love a meme that is four layers deep in weird
Speaker 3: Internet culture. And I think you're I think you're absolutely right,
Speaker 3: because memes, just like social media, are a dopamine casino.
Speaker 3: It is this stuff seeming to be true is still
Speaker 3: not the same thing as it actually being true. I mean,
Speaker 3: if the theory does hold water, then that means the
Speaker 3: days of automation rendering humans irrelevant are already well upon us.
Speaker 3: Kind of like when Ozumandias makes his speech in Watchmen
Speaker 3: spoiler and then says, yeah, I'm telling you this because
Speaker 3: it already happened. I'm not giving you an opportunity to
Speaker 3: brook me.
Speaker 2: But do you guys ever the ringing true thing. I'm
Speaker 2: just going to expand on that for a second, because
Speaker 2: it does ring partly true, at least to me, just
Speaker 2: when I think back, and let's not let's be really
Speaker 2: careful here, thinking back to our careers, thinking back to
Speaker 2: the Internet groups that we've interacted with, and companies we've
Speaker 2: interacted with, specifically ones that try to measure data and
Speaker 2: analytics and things like web page views, and you know,
Speaker 2: what are some of the terms they use, like a
Speaker 2: unique visitor or things like that. And and then what
Speaker 2: some of those companies, you know, usually third that's in
Speaker 2: our case, it's been like third party companies that are
Speaker 2: being used as services or something, but will give you
Speaker 2: data that looks really good for whatever your company is
Speaker 2: looking for. But it feels often like those and it's
Speaker 2: actually been proven a couple of cases we know of
Speaker 2: where that data is actually juiced quite a bit through
Speaker 2: little things, little interaction key key points in a like
Speaker 2: the way a person uses their mouse or the way
Speaker 2: a person uses their phone.
Speaker 4: What constitutes a view or time sped or use a
Speaker 4: banner ad auto plays a thing instead of actually somebody
Speaker 4: engaging with the video.
Speaker 2: But just this is my only argument. Think about how
Speaker 2: long and not to put you out of this, no all,
Speaker 2: but how long ben you and I specifically have been
Speaker 2: in this internet game thing where we're you know, fighting
Speaker 2: for people's attention, right, whether through a website or through
Speaker 2: a podcast or video and all that other stuff. And
Speaker 2: just how many times we've seen over the years companies
Speaker 2: private companies that are vying for a large company's money
Speaker 2: for some kind of service like that, right, And then
Speaker 2: how long those companies have been competing and attempting to
Speaker 2: goose those numbers like and how far do you think
Speaker 2: they've had to take it in order to get the
Speaker 2: lion's share of some huge enterprise company's money. So and
Speaker 2: it just makes me wonder if if it's a balloon
Speaker 2: effect when it comes to the actual interaction or number
Speaker 2: of interactions.
Speaker 4: I guess my question though, and then I'll shut the
Speaker 4: back up, like if if there are no people on
Speaker 4: the Internet, who who does all this data represent?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of It has some disturbing similarities to
Speaker 3: things like the gang stalking conspiracies, because in one form
Speaker 3: of a dead Internet theory, the implication is that when
Speaker 3: you go online, everybody else is an NPC except for you.
Speaker 3: And this, you know, there is a sort of I
Speaker 3: would argue there's a strong streak of narcissism inherent in
Speaker 3: a lot of paranoia, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 3: we're all.
Speaker 4: Out to get me right, right me?
Speaker 3: In particular, this this idea, though of juicy numbers, of
Speaker 3: framing and presenting things in an advantageous or profitable way,
Speaker 3: does show us that the one thing that will always
Speaker 3: remain true on the Internet is a profit motive. Does
Speaker 3: it matter if the comments are faked so long as
Speaker 3: the money is real. That's a question that companies grapple with.
Speaker 3: We see in this would argue the long shadow of
Speaker 3: bernese Bernez, who famously perfected the art of rigging questions
Speaker 3: in surveys to get the answers he wanted, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean.
Speaker 2: But it goes back to the very nature of something
Speaker 2: like a search engine like Google. Google's money for a
Speaker 2: long time, and still for a large part today is
Speaker 2: made through ads and people who pay to have their
Speaker 2: sites show up at the top, or you know, people
Speaker 2: who pay big money and work with them, or I'm
Speaker 2: just trying to think these social encounter.
Speaker 4: To the mission of what a search engine should inherently be,
Speaker 4: where it's democratization of information as opposed to you can
Speaker 4: pay extra to get yours in the first spot.
Speaker 2: Ideologically that's great and it sounds great, but it doesn't
Speaker 2: keep anybody's jobs right, and it doesn't grow anybody's bottom line.
Speaker 2: And as Ben is saying, like it has always been
Speaker 2: about that profit motive for everything that maybe we even
Speaker 2: personally or you know, theoretically hold dear about the Internet
Speaker 2: and what it provides for us, that profit motive at
Speaker 2: the center, I think has been the manipulating factor. And
Speaker 2: it really does weird me out thinking about you. If
Speaker 2: you wanted to, like you said, Ben, we just need
Speaker 2: to hit a thousand comments, that's the metric, and oh
Speaker 2: we can we can do that for you.
Speaker 4: Yeah we can a thousand votes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but see that's harder.
Speaker 2: A thousand votes. Would you'd have to activate.
Speaker 4: No, it's very true being I mean, I'm saying sometimes
Speaker 4: these margins are you know, like hilariously small.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and again, a lot of you get a lot
Speaker 3: of people we've seen it happen. You get a lot
Speaker 3: of people cowboying in as consultants, right, and they want
Speaker 3: to be the bringers of the truth. The digital Moses
Speaker 3: descends the mountain and says, this is the click through
Speaker 3: rate that matters to a great degree. They're just kind
Speaker 3: of drinking their own flavors all smoke man that boy?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Is it ever?
Speaker 3: And may God grant us the confidence of the stridently incorrect, right,
Speaker 3: the confidently incorrect.
Speaker 2: Do you guys remember actually it was around the twenty
Speaker 2: maybe fifteen to seventeen time when a lot of the
Speaker 2: Facebook pages that we were the let's say our company
Speaker 2: was running, right, a lot of them had to purge
Speaker 2: a ton of users from each of our main Facebook
Speaker 2: pages because of the the what are they call them,
Speaker 2: farms like server farms?
Speaker 3: Farms? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: I mean we certainly know that with x FKA Twitter,
Speaker 4: the value of that company significantly got called in a
Speaker 4: question when it was revealed how many bots constitute their
Speaker 4: quote unquote user base, which is the number that's used
Speaker 4: for valuating these these social media companies. Is what's our
Speaker 4: user base, guys.
Speaker 3: And no hour and for background on our side of it.
Speaker 3: When when that great Facebook purge happened, I believe it
Speaker 3: was because there was a moment of awakening, right. I
Speaker 3: think those bots were just being added by by people
Speaker 3: who had different interest from those of the company.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we didn't we didn't even realize it was happening.
Speaker 2: And you know, and it's so funny because when you're
Speaker 2: on the inside of something like that, you're seeing those numbers,
Speaker 2: those metrics that everybody looks at as an awesome thing, awesome, great,
Speaker 2: but but it's this weird other thing that's happening in
Speaker 2: the background, which is again it speaks to this theory,
Speaker 2: which it doesn't mean theories fully true, but like people
Speaker 2: are willing, willingly adding fake users to the internet for these.
Speaker 3: Interactively, assertively, aggressively the Sorcerer's apprentice all over again. That's
Speaker 3: what we're kind of, that's the possibility we're looking at.
Speaker 3: And you know, we're seeing the rise of general like
Speaker 3: large language models, AI generated content, deep fakes, which are
Speaker 3: indistinguishable from the real thing. This is a new era
Speaker 3: of dead Internet theory. But I would argue, I think
Speaker 3: we all argue, the basis of it remains the same.
Speaker 3: Do you want to take a quick ad break?
Speaker 4: That sounds good to me. Let's take a quick break
Speaker 4: here away from our sponsor, hopefully some sort of Internet
Speaker 4: service provider or a social media company of note, and
Speaker 4: then we'll be back with more on this frankly pretty
Speaker 4: terrifying topic.
Speaker 3: We've returned. So the theory has two primary elements, the
Speaker 3: idea that bots have largely outnumbered human activity, and the
Speaker 3: idea that some unknown actors are deploying these bots to
Speaker 3: manipulate the humans that remain. It's fascinating, But here's the
Speaker 3: thing that keeps getting me again. It's not a question
Speaker 3: of yes or no. It's a question of to what
Speaker 3: degree is this theory true. I mean, I didn't know this,
Speaker 3: but in twenty twenty two, bots contributed almost half of
Speaker 3: all Internet traffic in the world.
Speaker 2: That was from one source band and I saw that.
Speaker 2: But then there's another one from Barracuda that it put
Speaker 2: it at like sixty five percent, and that's including social
Speaker 2: media and stuff too, So I think there it just
Speaker 2: depends on what.
Speaker 4: You But what one thing that my mind keeps jumping
Speaker 4: back to in this especially when you're here to talk
Speaker 4: about all these like goose numbers, is like I as
Speaker 4: a user and as a participator in the Internet, and
Speaker 4: rather I've gotten relatively good at curating my experience and
Speaker 4: only looking at the stuff that interests me. I interact
Speaker 4: with a lot of people who I know are are
Speaker 4: real because I talked to them and I know them
Speaker 4: in real life. I don't think about the overall number
Speaker 4: of users on the Internet. So even if sixty percent
Speaker 4: of the quote unquote traffic on the Internet is bots, whatever,
Speaker 4: that twenty percent that I'm engaging with is the Internet
Speaker 4: to me, you know what I'm saying. And so I think,
Speaker 4: like all of that trash that's sixty percent or forty
Speaker 4: seven point four percent, I don't.
Speaker 3: Think everybody is as affected by.
Speaker 4: If you're a savvy Internet user, I'm not saying I'm
Speaker 4: so such a tech savvy Internet genius. I'm just saying
Speaker 4: people of a certain age, at a certain level of
Speaker 4: Internet savvy is kind of know how to steer away.
Speaker 4: But I think it's just going to get worse, is
Speaker 4: what we're saying.
Speaker 3: That's the trend. And also, yeah, you might say this
Speaker 3: doesn't affect me, it's not in my part of the playground, right,
Speaker 3: But that part of the playground is coming to you
Speaker 3: at least, that's the argument, because that twenty twenty two
Speaker 3: number we quoted that represents a five point one percent
Speaker 3: year over year increase, which consultants love to say stuff
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh my gosh, Well, guys, I just wanted
Speaker 2: to cite that Barracuda think again, because I I feel
Speaker 2: like I may have gotten it wrong. According to something
Speaker 2: Posts in September of twenty twenty one called bot attacks,
Speaker 2: Top Threats and Trends, they said North America accounts for
Speaker 2: like across the entirety of the Internet, North America accounts
Speaker 2: for sixty seven percent of what they call bad bot traffic,
Speaker 2: and then sixty four percent they say, of all Internet
Speaker 2: traffic is made up by bots. But again, this is
Speaker 2: one this is their own measurements, right, and this is
Speaker 2: like a security Internet security company. They do a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of stuff. But they found that in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: and we cannot stress this enough. That is before the
Speaker 2: large release of these these language learning models and all
Speaker 2: this stuff where if you want to, you can create
Speaker 2: You can literally just type in code a bot that scrubs, oh,
Speaker 2: I don't know this healthcare website and attempts to log in,
Speaker 2: you know, every whatever.
Speaker 3: We make a bot that creates make a bot that
Speaker 3: creates other bots that build websites that are just similar
Speaker 3: enough to the actual website someone's looking for.
Speaker 2: Sure, Sure, and that's automated. But these other bots are
Speaker 2: created by human beings, these at least that are being
Speaker 2: referred to here by Barracuda, to do things like sweep
Speaker 2: through a site like Amazon and check on the prices
Speaker 2: of very specific items so that it can then spit
Speaker 2: out what the user of this bot, or you know,
Speaker 2: the company that's deploying this bot, can know how to
Speaker 2: price your own thing on your own website or whatever.
Speaker 2: Or you know, again like trying to broute force into
Speaker 2: other websites. But I don't know how much of that is,
Speaker 2: like the social media bot traffic.
Speaker 3: Well, there's also the question it's not just okay, so
Speaker 3: think of them as tools, right, It's not just the
Speaker 3: question of does the screwdriver work. It's the question of evolution.
Speaker 3: Are the screwdrivers turning into power drills. Right, How sophisticated
Speaker 3: are these programs becoming. We know that state level actors
Speaker 3: control botnets. They've deployed them in various ways to attempt
Speaker 3: this way public opinion or even interfere with elections, and
Speaker 3: they're getting very good at it. They're getting stunningly accomplished.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and that's scary and I feel like super real.
Speaker 2: But I just want to go back to that thing
Speaker 2: in the beginning where we're trying to like break out
Speaker 2: the different types of bot traffic or fake traffic or
Speaker 2: not real human beings you're interacting with, because a lot
Speaker 2: of these bots are purpose built, right, they have a
Speaker 2: very specific purpose. And then if you look at some
Speaker 2: of the bots that were uncovered around that twenty twenty
Speaker 2: one time when Twitter was becoming x it was going
Speaker 2: on its journey to become x, there was intense bot
Speaker 2: traffic to make posts more popular in the algorithm so
Speaker 2: that they would get bumped up and serve to more people.
Speaker 2: Because there was a real problem with Twitter at the
Speaker 2: time where everybody's kind of seeing the same top posts
Speaker 2: across the entirety of the thing. So everybody is building
Speaker 2: these bots to make the algorithm think that there's popularity
Speaker 2: being generated so that it does end up getting popular,
Speaker 2: so that whatever ad thing you've got inside that viral
Speaker 2: tweet is effective. But it changed completely with X with
Speaker 2: the blue check marks, because then you can pay to
Speaker 2: have those check marks, which it just changed the algorithm
Speaker 2: a little bit, and now you just pay to have
Speaker 2: enough blue check mark accounts to comment a fake bot
Speaker 2: comment on somebody else's blue check mark thing, which then
Speaker 2: pushes it all the way up.
Speaker 4: And it doesn't serve as any kind of real verification
Speaker 4: of identity at all, because you can just see anybody
Speaker 4: can buy.
Speaker 2: It in and it's for profit, like we're talking about.
Speaker 4: Absolutely and all about gaming. That algorithm is the name
Speaker 4: of the the game. No pun intended, but I guess
Speaker 4: maybe a little. So I just mentioned really quickly that
Speaker 4: company article that I referenced by Michael Grothaus is the
Speaker 4: dead Internet theory suddenly coming true. This could be a sign.
Speaker 4: There's just one little thing that I think is so
Speaker 4: appropriate here, he says. Ever since chat GPT bursts onto
Speaker 4: the scenes in late twenty twenty two, people have been
Speaker 4: using it to generate content for websites, social media posts,
Speaker 4: and articles of all kinds. People have also been using
Speaker 4: AI image generation tools to create an unending flood of photos,
Speaker 4: video at artwork, which now abound on mainstream social media
Speaker 4: platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok uh. And
Speaker 4: these videos and sites and accounts get crazy engagement. There
Speaker 4: are these memes that are being generated something called shrimp Jesus.
Speaker 4: That is all of these images of like Jesus like
Speaker 4: hanging out with these these shrimp, these warfic shrimp in
Speaker 4: like the ocean, like he's in the Little Mermaid or something.
Speaker 2: And I saw crab there's something like that.
Speaker 4: Sure, Crab Jesus is a direct AI response to shrimp Jesus.
Speaker 4: And that's what you get. Now we're in the Jesus
Speaker 4: and Christ station's echo chamber. But it's not even echo
Speaker 4: chamber perpetrated by actual people. It's an echo chamber perpetrated
Speaker 4: by these bots that are now armed with chat, GPT
Speaker 4: and image you know, AI creation.
Speaker 3: Tools, and we know we know. It can also be
Speaker 3: difficult to verify somebody's real identity online, right. It can
Speaker 3: be difficult to find the right person unless you're like
Speaker 3: the Puzzle Palace. It can be difficult to find a
Speaker 3: random person and say, yes, specifically, it's that guy in Akron, Ohio.
Speaker 3: And that's that's a whole other philosophical bag of badgers. Right,
Speaker 3: anonymity and privacy expectations, But like you say, dancing with
Speaker 3: the algorithm, everybody knows it happens. The question really is
Speaker 3: one of degree. Sure bots are everywhere, but do they
Speaker 3: genuinely outnumber humans? What does it mean? That's where the
Speaker 3: dead Internet theory runs into some challenges. A lot of
Speaker 3: the things we read about it are kind of a
Speaker 3: tree of if thens based on some primary foundational assumptions,
Speaker 3: but then you see a lot of anecdotal evidence, which
Speaker 3: is not the same thing as quantitative data. So I
Speaker 3: want to give a shout out to a great YouTube channel.
Speaker 3: I was surprised that this video was not getting more views,
Speaker 3: but it just came out a few weeks ago. A
Speaker 3: guy named siros On on YouTube has an in depth
Speaker 3: explanation of this, and he hipped us to the twenty
Speaker 3: twenty three Imperva bad Bot Report and he brings up
Speaker 3: the same question. It's a question of nuance. Imperva. Here's
Speaker 3: what they did. They took a single network in Capsula,
Speaker 3: and they took a sample of sixteen point seven billion
Speaker 3: bought in human website visits, not social media from August
Speaker 3: to November of twenty sixteen, and what they found is
Speaker 3: pretty stunning. But they also they hit on something that
Speaker 3: I think you were just mentioning their matt, which is
Speaker 3: we have to differentiate between the bots. Not all are
Speaker 3: created equal. Some are good or benign, others are bad,
Speaker 3: you know, like good bots. I think it's I think
Speaker 3: it's helpful to think of good bots as the good
Speaker 3: bacteria in the guts of the digital body.
Speaker 4: On message boards and things like that. And I'm sure
Speaker 4: deeper than that. That's the first thing that comes to
Speaker 4: mind for.
Speaker 2: Me, and literally the standard web crawlers that like a
Speaker 2: Google or a similar search would use just to make
Speaker 2: sure the thing knows what's on the internet. Yeah, what
Speaker 2: what can it have access to? So it's constantly going
Speaker 2: through and just checking websites. Oh there's an active connection there,
Speaker 2: there's one, there, there's there.
Speaker 4: And it's certainly easy to shade Google for like the
Speaker 4: whole you know, influence of search and all of that.
Speaker 4: And there I'm certain there are better browsers and I
Speaker 4: know you guys have mentioned some in the past, and
Speaker 4: I think Opera is a Internet browser with a built
Speaker 4: in search that I think people really like a lot.
Speaker 4: The filter's out a lot of that noise. But in general,
Speaker 4: if Google wasn't in some way still effective and it
Speaker 4: was just spamming you with this garbage, it wouldn't be
Speaker 4: able to make money on the ad because no one
Speaker 4: would use it.
Speaker 3: Right well, and also it got to the past a
Speaker 3: certain threshold of size and scale. You can create your
Speaker 3: own feedback loop. Now Google is the biggest because Google
Speaker 3: is the biggest, you know what I mean, they don't
Speaker 3: have to and they are brilliant people who work at Google,
Speaker 3: and to your point, and well, yet it's it can
Speaker 3: sometimes feel like it's easy for us to look at
Speaker 3: scance at that. We're obviously not saying that everybody at
Speaker 3: Google is some kind of like arcane digital version of
Speaker 3: a necromancer.
Speaker 2: They're just trying really hard to not be bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is so different from being good. But there's
Speaker 3: also okay, So he says bad bots are the thing
Speaker 3: we need to be more concerned about. Impersonators assuming false
Speaker 3: identities to execute distributed denial of service attacks and spammers,
Speaker 3: hacker tools, et cetera. So to uh. From this frame
Speaker 3: of mind, the question is now a matter of not
Speaker 3: figuring out the ratio bots the humans so much, but
Speaker 3: instead the ratio of bad bots the good bots. It's fascinating, right,
Speaker 3: it's fascinating, but it's difficult to get a read on.
Speaker 3: And this is where I think we get to some
Speaker 3: really space age stuff. What if? What if we imagine
Speaker 3: a world where human beings have disappeared, but the Internet
Speaker 3: still appears to thrive, and it just repeats and remixes
Speaker 3: interaction patterns for as long as those servers stay on.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's what would happen.
Speaker 2: I think there's gonna be engagement bots, that's all. It's
Speaker 2: gonna be.
Speaker 3: Just engaging with each other left hand.
Speaker 2: And it'll be on the official Pepsi Cola and Coca
Speaker 2: Cola social media whatever interactive thing is. They're just all
Speaker 2: they're like, oh man, this is my favorite drink. No,
Speaker 2: it's my favorite drink. Which flavors your favorite?
Speaker 4: Have you seen these TikTok videos with that voice that
Speaker 4: sounds like this talking about a cool thing that you
Speaker 4: definitely should try. It's just gonna be those.
Speaker 3: Just feeding, feeding into each of each other.
Speaker 4: It's like making a copy of a copy of a copy.
Speaker 4: Oh my god. Yeah, it's gonna get weird, because they
Speaker 4: say when you train learning language models with other learning
Speaker 4: language models, it becomes this weird xerox feedback loop that
Speaker 4: gets real crazy, real quick.
Speaker 3: Like the movie Multiplicity. Just so that's not a dated reference.
Speaker 4: Is that with Michael Keaton? Yeah, because they get a
Speaker 4: little dumber, right, isn't that the deal? Yeah? He makes
Speaker 4: more and more copies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And we also know that there have been real
Speaker 3: world indicators of this problem. Another often quoted article is
Speaker 3: from the entire in Pelligencer or The New Yorker in
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen. A journalist named Max Reid or Max Read
Speaker 3: points out that for a little bit of time in
Speaker 3: twenty thirteen, fully half of YouTube traffic was quote bots
Speaker 3: masquerading as people, and it was that that number was
Speaker 3: so high that in the back rooms of YouTube and Google,
Speaker 3: the employees were worried there might be an inflection point
Speaker 3: after which the systems for detecting fraudulent traffic would start
Speaker 3: to think the bot traffic was real because it was
Speaker 3: the majority, and they would start rating human traffic as fake.
Speaker 3: They called this hypothetical moment.
Speaker 4: The inversion well, you know, I mean, heck, it happens
Speaker 4: with websites and abs and flows of like internet business,
Speaker 4: and whether it be podcast audiences or YouTube viewerships or whatever,
Speaker 4: there usually are these periodic cullings where the number we
Speaker 4: thought was the number is now revealed to no longer
Speaker 4: be the number, but that number is still at least
Speaker 4: the number we can depend on. So even if it
Speaker 4: looks like you lost half your audience, you didn't really
Speaker 4: lose half your audience. You just lost this inflated phony version,
Speaker 4: and everyone in the business kind of has to reckon
Speaker 4: with that.
Speaker 2: You know, these are massive, publicly traded companies that all
Speaker 2: like almost all of their no, I'm going to put
Speaker 2: it out there, I'm going to say the vast majority
Speaker 2: of their money comes from human beings seeing and hearing
Speaker 2: the ads that pay for their content that they post, right.
Speaker 3: The Achilles heel of internet business.
Speaker 2: But literally, if this inversion thing he's talking about here,
Speaker 2: Max Reed's talking about, if that actually happens and we
Speaker 2: reach that point, then there is no more like, how
Speaker 2: do you how does an advertiser justify paying exorbitant amounts
Speaker 2: of money to advertise on a platform if they know
Speaker 2: that there's.
Speaker 4: Spots don't buy y'all know, so they just don't, you know,
Speaker 4: they haven't evolved into that yet.
Speaker 2: But if that happens, because the other side of all
Speaker 2: those businesses that we've talked about but so many times
Speaker 2: on the show, it's not just the ads, it's it's
Speaker 2: getting the information on the user to know which ads you.
Speaker 4: Got to serve to that user, right content to stick
Speaker 4: the ads in, because that's all demographically generated too.
Speaker 2: So maybe we can build a post worker economy, you guys,
Speaker 2: where we all have kind of our own bots that
Speaker 2: represent us that just kind of exist.
Speaker 3: Let's do the internet like this is one I thinking about,
Speaker 3: like a pandemic, a catastrophic nuclear exchange, some other civilization
Speaker 3: ending thing. And then imagine one day, after the dust
Speaker 3: has settled, genuine extraterrestrials happen along and they discover a
Speaker 3: world with no humans, no creators, but instead an active
Speaker 3: series of voices talking back and forth to one another
Speaker 3: for attention constantly. It would be like entering a haunted house.
Speaker 2: Can I just say I think they're selling each other products,
Speaker 2: like actively building and sell each other products.
Speaker 3: Yes, And this is not even factoring in the issue
Speaker 3: that we're talking about here, which is the idea of
Speaker 3: online resurrection, collecting a human beings record of all their
Speaker 3: interactions and then building something to mimic those interactions. I mean,
Speaker 3: at that point, we're skirting towards uh simulation theory, uh territory. Jesus, guys,
Speaker 3: I have a keyword right next to me.
Speaker 4: Hit it. That's the sound of the inflection point? Guys?
Speaker 4: Is this what gooning?
Speaker 1: Is?
Speaker 4: Just a bunch of bots selling each other where they
Speaker 4: can never actually do anything with it or making money.
Speaker 4: It's just this concept. I'm sorry, I'm being gross.
Speaker 3: Robert Devins gave us a different version or definition is,
Speaker 3: but I just think this is.
Speaker 4: It's it's sort of like striving for something but never
Speaker 4: actually achieving it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But if the data we go last year from
Speaker 2: Imperva and the stuff from Barracuda is right, it's already happening.
Speaker 2: It was literally bots selling, selling each other things and
Speaker 2: boosting prices and making investors money because they have shares
Speaker 2: of companies and it's a giant bubble.
Speaker 4: We haven't even talked about how this might impact things
Speaker 4: that are not how it may impact how it's already
Speaker 4: part and parcel of crypto. Oh lord, we haven't even
Speaker 4: talked about that. That's like all I mean, geez, Louise.
Speaker 3: Check out that intelligence or article again, because he hits
Speaker 3: on that too. It's also I said, hits on it
Speaker 3: like he's courting it. Whatever, we'll keep it and someone
Speaker 3: I like a hit of a dopamine casino. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: just so. I mean, that's the question leads us to
Speaker 3: is the Internet dead? Not really? But also how do
Speaker 3: you define dead? Is the idea that the entirety of
Speaker 3: the Internet is populated by bots other than of course
Speaker 3: you specifically, that is not currently supported by the metrics,
Speaker 3: But it also seems not at all unreasonable to note
Speaker 3: that a pretty significant chunk of the Internet is bot written,
Speaker 3: and that pattern is escalating over time. Like now, it's
Speaker 3: to me it's a question of the time window, right,
Speaker 3: or were just going to have an Internet that's like
Speaker 3: two mirrors reflecting themselves back into the abyss, you know,
Speaker 3: and just liking each other's post. It's a cool ghost story.
Speaker 2: That's it. I mean, yeah, I look, I'm sold, We're
Speaker 2: already there. Dead internet theory is true except for everybody
Speaker 2: who's called in to us or written. Actually, no, we
Speaker 2: can't trust that either, can we.
Speaker 3: We can't ignore the emails, no, none of it.
Speaker 4: We can't.
Speaker 2: If you facetimed us, it wouldn't matter.
Speaker 3: Because you don't FaceTime people at announce. Also, you have
Speaker 3: to show up in person to let us know. This
Speaker 3: is why we need to do more live shows. Maybe
Speaker 3: we end on this. How do we know that we're
Speaker 3: not bots already? Do we just fall for the Everybody
Speaker 3: has to go click on a picture of a fire
Speaker 3: high right, that's the only way.
Speaker 2: Well, no, for now, in what May sixth, Monday May sixth,
Speaker 2: as we're recording this in the year twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: we are still humans because we can one laugh convincingly,
Speaker 2: I think, and sarcasm can be conveyed via our tone
Speaker 2: in words. So I think right now, as of this moment,
Speaker 2: we're still humans. But give those models another couple of weeks.
Speaker 3: Is that exactly what a bot would say? It is? Yeah,
Speaker 3: let's click on. Let's click on our pictures of hydrants.
Speaker 3: If you are hearing this. Also, not all bots are bad.
Speaker 3: If you are a non organic based life form, we
Speaker 3: would also love to hear your take, So let us
Speaker 3: know what's on your mind, be it a meat mind
Speaker 3: or a series of ones and zeros. We try to
Speaker 3: be easy to find.
Speaker 4: Guess where all why man? Yeah, even if you are
Speaker 4: a boy, that's fine. We welcome you with open arms.
Speaker 4: You can find its at the handle of Conspiracy Stuff,
Speaker 4: where we exist on the social platforms of note, including Facebook, YouTube,
Speaker 4: where we have a video content rolling out every single week,
Speaker 4: and x fka Twitter. You can also finance at the
Speaker 4: handle Conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram and TikTok. We didn't
Speaker 4: even get into TikTok, but apparently that's where a lot
Speaker 4: of this stuff is happening too, These fully AI generated videos.
Speaker 2: Dude, on Instagram, there are I am being suggested like
Speaker 2: pages I guess that are fully AI generated grabbed videos
Speaker 2: that are of one category or another. Kind of reminds
Speaker 2: me of what happened, Oh.
Speaker 4: What was that?
Speaker 2: I don't want to throw too much shape at Parcast.
Speaker 2: Remember when they came out with like a show called
Speaker 2: Conspiracy Theories, and then or Mysteries and then true crime
Speaker 2: and it was just like whole categories that then everything
Speaker 2: went underneath that. That's happening now on Instagram at least
Speaker 2: that I'm seeing where it doesn't. There doesn't appear to
Speaker 2: be any human interaction. It's just random videos that are
Speaker 2: pulled and then re spit out with a basic header.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's it, and it's a numbers game, right. The
Speaker 3: factor in a high rate of attrition because for the
Speaker 3: ninety nine people who don't engage don't matter in comparison
Speaker 3: to the one that does. I'll also note something in
Speaker 3: the interest of throwing shape, but not really throwing shape, folks.
Speaker 3: Byte Dance still refuses to sell TikTok. You've probably heard
Speaker 3: of that kerfuffle, despite the fact that they could make
Speaker 3: a lot of money off of it, which leads me
Speaker 3: to ask, what is their motivation? Then, well, what's the
Speaker 3: underlying nature of their code? That's a thing, right, the
Speaker 3: base code.
Speaker 4: I think their algorithm is what they're being protective of
Speaker 4: because we know, you know, copycats like Zuckerberg and the like.
Speaker 4: I mean, how Instagram's already kind of pretty close. It's
Speaker 4: not obviously not as successful as as TikTok right now,
Speaker 4: but it's a pretty easy one to one transfer. People
Speaker 4: just want someone to put their content. It's not going
Speaker 4: to be the end of that type of video. If
Speaker 4: TikTok were to go away. But yeah, a lot of
Speaker 4: money's being left on the table, which means there's a
Speaker 4: lot of secret money that we can't even see because
Speaker 4: it's on hidden tables in back rooms.
Speaker 3: And if the US is so concerned about data protection
Speaker 3: and privacy, why don't they pass other data protection and
Speaker 3: privacy build it. It's just because TikTok is eating their
Speaker 3: lunch for a practice that they also engage in.
Speaker 4: It's a great way of demonizing another country too, that
Speaker 4: we have a complicated relationship with.
Speaker 3: Let's just call.
Speaker 2: It, guys. Have we talked about like peak personal data
Speaker 2: acquisition where everybody's at some point everybody who is of
Speaker 2: purchasing power age has all of their information tracked and
Speaker 2: stored somewhere and available for purchase online and.
Speaker 4: Through data broker discussions. We have at the very least,
Speaker 4: you know, touched on that. But it's all exponential, guys.
Speaker 4: So we're talking about with this data internet theory and
Speaker 4: all whatever stat happened last year is just gonna be
Speaker 4: doubling year over year, if not more. I know, we're
Speaker 4: kind of in the end credits that we just have
Speaker 4: one last thing to say, but boy, this is a
Speaker 4: fascinating topic.
Speaker 2: We're just trying to keep you around, you know, for
Speaker 2: the algorithm and to throw the ads.
Speaker 3: Also, I find the idea of building this haunted house
Speaker 3: to be immensely fascinating.
Speaker 4: From a sci fi perspective.
Speaker 3: Right, it'd be cool just to see it. Okay, Well
Speaker 3: that's okay, all right, we'll see. We'll see if I
Speaker 3: still feel the same way later. But gosh, we have
Speaker 3: a phone number.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if you want to tell us what you think
Speaker 4: about all this wild wacky stuff.
Speaker 2: But if it really is that haunted house, will you
Speaker 2: actually get to see it?
Speaker 4: You know we won't get to see it. We'll be gone,
Speaker 4: I'll think. So, man, just write a story about it
Speaker 4: now then, so we can enjoy it before it actually
Speaker 4: takes place.
Speaker 2: Call one eight three three std WYTK. It's a voicemail system.
Speaker 2: You'll figure out how to use it. Give yourself a
Speaker 2: cool nickname. You've got three minutes. Make sure you let
Speaker 2: us know if we can use your name and message
Speaker 2: on the air. If not, just say so. If you
Speaker 2: don't want to do that, why not instead send us
Speaker 2: a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3: We are the folks who read every single email we get.
Speaker 3: Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
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