According to Wikipedia:
The Dead Internet Theory is a conspiracy theory suggesting that the internet "died" sometime around 2016–2017 and is now largely dominated by bots and AI-generated content rather than real people.
But there's something even more surprising about this theory that nobody's talking about.
Now, I'm not sure why we still label this a "conspiracy theory."
Most of the internet is made up of bots and AI content.
And it will only get worse.
But honestly, I don't see it as a problem.
In fact, it could present one of the greatest opportunities for creatives and entrepreneurs to stand out.
On the other hand, there is an endless supply of hyper-addictive, brain-dead content that people can scroll through at any given time.
It's a little insane, but the average screen time for the average American is a little over 7 hours! Sure, some of that may be work related, but we all know the majority of it, even if you're at work, is spent on social media.
Reports of depression, uncertainty, and stress have gone through the roof, especially with the threat of AI replacing human jobs, leaving us grasping at our last sources of purpose, even when most people say they hate their jobs.
The thing is, most people don't want to change.
People become so accustomed to pain that it feels like home, and leaving it seems like the real suffering.
And with AI breaking record-high benchmarks every other week, individuals and companies can churn out hundreds to thousands of pieces of content every day.
Since this content is so addicting, the stress and depression and uncertainty will only continue to get worse, and we won't be able to control ourselves.
The question is:
Is that actually a problem?
We've all thought about it… is society really going to end up like that scene from Wall-E where everyone is obese, floating around in a chair, being drip-fed sugary beverages and entertainment all day long?
I'm not so sure.
Processed VS Organic Content
Processed food is bad.
That's obvious, we all know it.
But that doesn't mean we can't have a cookie or two—or maybe an entire butter cake to yourself at 1 AM watching old episodes of The Office after a few birthday espresso martinis—to balance out the over-optimization of our lives.
The problems spring up when we can't control ourselves for an extended period of time.
And that's very easy to do.
Fast food chains, streaming companies, gaming companies, and social media companies poor hundreds of billions of dollars into optimizing dopamine-driven feedback loops designed to keep consumers addicted.
Facebook alone spends over $20 billion annually on research and development.
Now, what makes fast food particularly addictive is this brutal combination:
Fat, sugar, and salt.
These were scarce resources that humans aren't adapted to have in abundance in today's world. We're adapted for survival. Scarce ingredients, when found, spurt dopamine into our brain to signal that we've found something to aid in our survival.
Once companies discovered this mechanism, they could now test and create combinations of these ingredients that maximize pleasure for their customers and keep them coming back for more. Addiction.
The internet companies followed suit. They adopted an advertising model for monetization and soon found that polarizing and inflammatory headlines led to capturing the most attention. Now all they had to do was serve more of what users "liked" to an instantly accessible screen. Hello, "For You" page!
There's processed food, and there's processed content.
Digital fat, sugar, and salt.
Cheap dopamine. Instant gratification. Entropy.
Quick and shallow content is just that: entropic. The more you consume, the more chaotic your mind becomes. There is no long term sense making. Just a bunch of useless ideas filling your brain without any goal or vision to apply them to. The digital food doesn't energize you or build muscle, it makes you feel so sluggish you just want to lay down all day and gain fat.
Being a Wall-E citizen, drooling over a curated algorithm that feeds you short-term gratifying content keeps you in a state of stress and survival. The combination of fear and desire pull you away from the present and psychic entropy—or disorder in the mind—increases. What you thought was a harmless post was actually a combination of 50 short posts you read in unison that silently induces chaos. You regress. You stay the same. You lock yourself into a paradigm of political ideologies and static opinions that aren't conducive to achieving anything worthwhile in your life.
The sad thing is… you don't care, and you didn't even notice you got yourself into this situation. That's why I'm writing this.
But there is a bright side.
You already know you can't trust social media companies to change the incentives they operate on.
But you can, and must, take matters into your own hands.
Shop At Digital Farmer's Markets
On the flip side of processed food and content, there is organic food and content.
"Organic" content is centropic.
Unlike entropy that leads to disorder and chaos, centropy leads to order and clarity. But you can't expect the For You page to feed you this content. You must actively search, curate, and nurture your digital feed, especially as AI content starts to ramp up.
How do you spot organic content?
- It is useful — it aids in the achievement of your goals. The caveat here is that you actually have to have self-generated goals. If you don't have a vision, most content—aside from that which helps generate vision—is useless. Go read a philosophy book.
- It is often long form — books, articles, newsletters, podcasts, and YouTube videos. It has enough room to deliver something of sense and value. However, many short form creators can post insights and education that act as a small puzzle piece for your mind.
- It is authentic — it is not created because it has to be, it is created because the creator deems it valuable enough to share with an audience that may benefit from it.
Organic, delayed gratification style content can still use persuasion and attention tactics, but they are based on relevant pain points, insight, and education rather than fear mongering and brain rot. Learn how to write it here.
The point of this is that not all social media content is bad.
In fact, it's an incredible way to tap into an infinite source of knowledge. Where else can you find information from people who have done what you want to do in life? Most successful people are self-educated, and the majority of self-education today is done through a screen.
Royalty in Roman Civilization—like Marcus Aurelius—had access to the best teachers to prepare them for the throne.
Now that you have access to the best teachers online, you decide to scroll videos of hot and dumb people dancing?
Make it make sense.
Why AI Content May Be A Good Thing
Nobody is talking about the fact that AI generated content may be a good thing.
Because here's the thing:
It doesn't matter if the internet is flooded with a ton of garbage content.
It already has been for years now.
Even further, if this actually began to pose a problem to the revenue of social media companies, which it probably will, they can create a solution. Cryptography of biometric passes to prove who is human are an obvious possibility.
It's fun to whine and complain about Dead Internet Reality to distract you from what you can do about it. The mind is tricky in this sense.
You're worried that bots and AI content have affected your ability to acquire good information when that couldn't be further from the truth. You just want everything fed to you, and the social media companies are giving you just that.
As mentioned in the beginning, we become so accustomed to pain that it feels like home, and leaving feels like the real suffering.
On top of that, think about how people actually view content.
There's a ton of content, yes.
But any given person can only view so many posts, and they can only follow so many people.
The reality here is that AI doesn't create great content on it's own.
I've tried to get it to replicate my writing. I've engineered simple prompts and prompts the size of a mini course on social media. Out of 100 posts AI spits out for me, maybe one can be posted. The rest are useful for ideas that I completely rewrite, some could use minor edits, but there's a crucial point here:
AI content isn't good unless you are good at content.
Most of it goes straight to the bottom of the barrel and isn't seen by human eyes. The dead internet is like an iceberg, and the majority of the dead content is so deep that nobody will ever see it.
And if the AI content was good, would it actually matter?
If I were to write this same exact newsletter, word for word, with AI, would you care? If it gave you the value you were looking for, I would argue that you wouldn't. You may say, "but if I knew it was AI, something would feel off."
This worry stems from a fundamental misunderstanding and over conflation of what AI is. Hype is great at clouding perception.
Intelligence is only one resource, and it's proving to be a pretty poor one at that. It falls flat if there is no vision, taste, and agency. If you aren't already good at the thing, AI won't be good at the thing.
Let's say this letter was written with AI. It would take a human behind the AI to orchestrate the story being told. That human would need vast experience in writing and content creation to lead to the output being good. A simple "write a newsletter on dead internet theory" would not lead anywhere remotely close to this exact newsletter.
AI hasn't replaced content, it has simply made bad content easier to make.
The fact remains that if you are unexperienced, unskilled, and are trying to use AI to achieve some quick result, you will fail. The principles haven't, and won't, change.
"But Dan, the first jobs that AI is going to replace are social media managers, copywriters, and content marketers!"
Correct, they are going to replace the formulaic ones.
You know, the social media managers who post a fancy image made in Canva that gets absolutely zero results for the client.
Or the content marketer who puts a picture of a pretty girl on the screen with a Gen Z caption that people are already tired of (this can be done already with Reel Farm).
Or the copywriter who wrote updates for a company just so they can say they have an "online presence."
Think of AI as a ghostwriter (or ghost coder, designer, filmmaker, etc).
A ghostwriter doesn't create the story, they write it. James Patterson (and this is a shock to most people) uses a ghostwriter for his novels. The thing is, James still orchestrates the plot, the characters, the lore, the marketing, the sales, the business, and the rest. The ghostwriter simply strings this together in writing. That's exactly what AI will do. Not just for writing, but for all of the above, allowing Patterson to do this all by himself… if he wants to.
Now here's the real kicker:
AI lacks a coherent vision and philosophy. People don't follow creators for one piece of content. They follow for their body of coherent work. You don't find value in this letter because it's the first one you've read. You find value in the entire philosophy I've strung together over the past 3-4 years that helps specific creative individuals make sense of their place in the world. If you're new here, you may find some value, but it compounds the more you read. Centropic. At least that's my hope.
The good news: good writers won't be replaced. They will become more powerful and dynamic.
Artificial intelligence has only created the potential for one person to create more, faster, in a company or not, but only if they value agency and self-development.
The Opportunity Of A Lifetime
Most people won't like this.
But it's ironic that the only way out is through.
To battle the processed content flood you must contribute to humanity by posting organic content.
"Contribute to humanity" sounds like a strong line to use here, but when social media is the media now, and you are the media, and media shapes culture, and culture shapes everything from politics to the economy… something as simple as "posting online" can become pretty important.
It is my belief that this is one of the few paths forward:
To become a value creator.
This isn't anything new. It's what the most happy and successful people have done throughout history. Why?
Happiness comes from resistance being overcome and a connection to something greater than yourself. In other words, creativity and contribution. When you create, you solve a problem. When you pass that creation onto someone else, you solve their problem. When you become a person who has value to give, and then give it consistently, you learn what it means to be happy.
The thing is, this wasn't very accessible in the past. But evolution is creative, and thus it solves problems, and this was a set of problems that has been brewing for a long time: the problem of work you hate, a lifestyle you don't control, and a lack of access to opportunity.
In comes social media as a potential solution. A platform that the uneducated person views as toxic. A platform that adopted poor incentives and took an interesting shape.
The good sides of it often go underappreciated:
- Anyone can learn — you have intelligence on tap, especially with AI. You can find any information you need to achieve what you want to achieve.
- Anyone can create — you don't need permission to post who you are, what you do, and why you do it in public.
- Anyone can be discovered — you no longer need a publisher, job board, or record label to write a book, find work, or make music. Your personal brand is your public resume.
Social media is where the attention is. In the past, it was on billboards, in your local network, and on the radio or TV. The average person often didn't have the opportunity to spread their work.
As AI continues to replace entry level jobs, and top paying jobs are reserved for the elite in skill (like getting into the NBA, it's probably not going to happen for the average person), the path forward lies in generalism, agency, and storytelling.
You Are The Moat (How To Future Proof Yourself)
It seems like people are starting to catch on to what I've been saying for the past few years now.
Not that I had some kind of revolutionary information, but because I proposed this as a potential solution:
- The internet is a decentralized school system, creators are the teachers who can teach relevant and useful information whose sole purpose isn't to make you a useful worker.
- The internet is the public town square where your value can be discovered by those who need it.
- Building an audience is the new resume and status symbol. Followers are less about vanity and more about social proof that people find value in your ideas.
- Anyone can be an entrepreneur. When the novelty and challenge of schooling and job advancement come to a halt in your mid 20s—causing a lack of meaning and purpose—entrepreneurship is how you continue to develop yourself and control your future.
That will not sit well with some people.
But listen here.
I'm not telling you to do anything crazy. I'm simply promoting the value of self-governance. I'm showing you that there is a path to taking control of your life. That if you were to become a creator, you wouldn't have to worry about jobs, careers, and AI as Naval would say.
Realize that I'm not talking about a "content creator."
I'm talking about the essence of your being.
You are a human. You are a creator. You build tools as a generalist would that allows you to thrive in any environment (unlike animals who can only thrive in one niche).
The thing is, the internet is where creators go right now.
Building an audience requires you to learn the stack of skills that makes you future-proof: agency, storytelling, persuasion, marketing, sales, writing, and how to orchestrate your vision with the help of AI—all as one person.
It's not about cringeworthy content templates and growing to a million followers in 6 months.
Think of Jordan Peterson.
He isn't a "content creator." He writes books. He gives talks. He has a writing software. He has Peterson Academy because schools wouldn't cut it.
The internet, and social media, are simply the best tools to advance his life's work.
That will probably change, but true creators will adapt. Whether it's intergalactic space, virtual reality, or we revert back to the stone age, you must become a creator. You must solve problems and distribute solutions.
Create the internet you want to be a part of.
Create the content you want to see in the world.
Create the products you would buy, use, and benefit from.
Since the internet is so central to our society, you'd be surprised how much of an impact your contribution can have on the progress of humanity. Zoom out and think about that for a bit.
Now, in the tech space, there's a lot of talk about moats.
When DeepSeek R1 (the Chinese AI company) built an outstanding model that rivaled ChatGPT o1 at a fraction of the cost, and open source, people started screaming, "There is no moat!"
Meaning that no given company has all of the resources to themselves. Meaning that resources like intelligence are moving in the direction of being close to zero cost and accessible to everyone—just like building an audience and connecting with anyone with an internet connection.
This leaves people wondering, "what is the moat?"
What is the thing that protects you against an uncertain future?
In software, people are saying it's the app layer.
That people building interfaces and use cases with AI are the ones with true security. They used to be made fun of for building ChatGPT wrappers (software that is just a reskinned version of ChatGPT with a new interface).
But little did they realize that everything is a wrapper.
Typeform, a multi billion dollar company, is just an HTML form wrapper.
So that begs the question, what's the ultimate wrapper? What's the ultimate moat?
You.
You are the niche.
Your vision, interests, experience, values, beliefs, and everything that makes you you is the most unique wrapper of any creation you put out into the world.
Write to yourself.
Build for yourself.
Solve your own problems and sell the solution.
By all measures, that is the only way to future-proof yourself.
Everything else is a distraction.
– Dan
If you want to learn my writing system to build an audience of people who support your work, check out 2 Hour Writer.
If you want to learn the basics of modern business, check out the One-Person Business Launchpad.
If you want a place to capture ideas, build a second brain, and discover how unique you really are, start writing in Kortex.