The Dead Internet

You’re scrolling through Facebook when you see it: a statue of Jesus Christ, but instead of marble, he’s made entirely of shrimp.

Thousands of people have liked it.

Hundreds have commented “Amen 🙏.”

Your first thought is probably confusion, maybe amusement. But here’s something you might not realize, and it’s important that you do: most of those likes probably aren’t from humans.

Neither are the comments.

And the account that posted it? Also probably not human.

Welcome to the Dead Internet Theory, except it’s not really a theory anymore.

Turns out there’s this idea that’s been floating around online forums for almost a decade that most of the internet is actually fake. That the posts, the engagement, the accounts you interact with daily are just bots and AI talking to each other while real humans watch, thinking they’re part of a vibrant community.

It sounds paranoid. Conspiracy-brained. The kind of thing you’d dismiss as extremely online nonsense.

It definitely started out that way. Except now the data is starting to back it up.

I wanted to know how much of what I see online actually comes from real people. So I spent a few days digging into bot traffic reports, platform disclosures, security research, and academic studies. 

What I found kinda ruined how I think about every platform I use. So, you know, I’m gonna ruin it for you too, so you can share my dejection.

Let me walk you through how the internet’s architecture created this vulnerability, why platforms are profiting from fake engagement, and how to navigate an online world where everything might be synthetic.

Let’s start with the numbers.

When Conspiracy Became Statistics

According to a 2025 report from security firm Imperva, 51% of global internet traffic is now generated by bots ^[1]. Nope, that’s not a typo. For the first time in history, non-human traffic has surpassed human activity online.