in days past, when one visited a small town, several businesses were there to serve the average person. places like "Joe's diner," "Millie's general store," "Rodney's hardware," and "The Pizza Stop" decorated the main street of that small town, and usually were busy. these businesses served their local community and usually produced or served a superior product because of the very fact that they were part of that community. they were beholden to their customers because they lived next door to their customers. just to survive, they had to be honest and give great value.
then suddenly, with very few exceptions, they disappeared.
what replaced them? about five corporate conglomerates. subway, mcdonald's, home depot, and walmart now served the local people, but they weren't on main street, they were out by the highway exit. main street died. only a few straggling pedestrians schlepped their way down the dusty street, laughed at by passersby as nutty old luddites opposed to newfangled progress.
this doest mean that progress is bad or good. advances in many industries have brought miracles to humanity. but what if you want to purchase a particular item that walmart doest sell? gone are the days when you had 10 or 20 choices of stores. now, you only have one, and if you need something they do not have, you go without...or worse still, go with what they tell you to buy.
this is what the internet became in 2008, and to be honest, it was probably much earlier.
as of 2022, it is said that there are around 2 billion websites on the world wide web. this may give the average person the idea that the internet is vast and endless, and it nearly is, but this is an idea predicated on falsehood. yes, there are 2 billion websites out there, but only around 170 to 200 million websites are actually visited. while the web may appear to be endless, users of it only go to a handful of sites. 90 percent of the web simply isn't used, and because it isn't used, is considered dead.
it grows more disturbing when you understand that the internet does not want you to realize this. the number one result of a google search for the term "dead internet theory" spits back an article from "the atlantic" ( https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/08/dead-internet-theory-wrong-but-feels-true/619937/ ) which claims that the idea of a dead internet is absurd and paranoid. it even has "experts" to back up the premise that the dead internet theory is akin to other more outlandish ideas such as celibacy leading to magical powers. that sort of writing is enough for me. when i want to learn about any particular subject, and google immediately tells me that i am a fool for even looking up such nonsense, i can feel the internet pushing back against me. telling me to look the other way. other google results are just as odd. terms such as terrifying, ridiculous, and troublesome are all used to describe the dead internet theory in the search results, but nothing that may validate or endorse the theory can be found on that particular search engine.
granted, i only went three pages deep into what google returned for my query, but who really looks past the first page or so? this is why the internet is dead. google didn't spit back a series of "web-rings" or individual's pages on the subject. it showed me one article that denounced the subject and then 30 pages of reddit, youtube, spotify, and facebook all regurgitating the same opinion. google ignored the individual so that it could show me the consensus. but who really is the consensus? and, more importantly, did it show me only what it wanted me to see?
many people who talk about the dead internet theory claim that the world wide web is all bots and AI, and the article that i linked above delves into that thought for a bit, but the purpose of this essay isn't to discuss that portion of the theory, this essay will focus on the human aspect that creates dead webspace. (dis)like buttons, upvotes, and karma on websites can be exploited by bots, but they are also traps meant to keep the human eye watching only one or two things and to occupy the human brain with an endless cycle of "shares" and "comments" designed to echo what other humans are saying. it is a sticky glue trap meant to keep users within a certain group of websites, not asking questions, but happily slapping each other on the back for "right-thought."
humans, through time, have craved acceptance. parishioners belonged to religions that took them in, workers formed unions, fans cheered together for their sports team, and internet users sought out websites where their voices could be heard. but as time went on, these websites became less and less. through internet rot (defunct websites, code errors, changed or missing URLs, and growing censorship), those old websites began to 404 and disappear. users were shuffled towards a smaller sample of places to go for information. added to this was the shrinking number of search tools available. virtually all of today's web searches are done through google and google doest want you to visit Joes_diner.com, Millies_general_store.com, RodneysHardware.com, or ThePizzaStop.net. no, they want you to visit the big box stores who give them higher amounts of advertising revenue and who's websites track your every move and thought through your cell phone.
those old web-rings and forums, for all of their crackpot ideas and conspiriacy theory laced posts, at least had a human element involved. if a forum poster made a post that many didn't like, or was full of errors, it was a sure bet that several other forum members would point out those errors and judge the content of the post for what it was. today, there isn't even a "dislike button" anymore. if you go to the correct subreddit or the correct facebook page and express the correct notion, not only will you be upvoted and cheered, but you will be lauded as an expert of the subject no matter how outlandish or false that notion might be. the craving for acceptance has superseded facts in favor of emotion and truth in favor of the phenomena of the hug box. perhaps the worst part of this all is that a lot of those old websites are still out there, but you will never find them using a search engine. no, the algorithm has deemed them undesirable.
what is desirable is the "big box" stores of the internet. places like youtube, wikipedia and facebook are where the average internet user is forced to look for information. while these sites may provide content that is sensible and even advantageous at times, looking behind them tells a more sinister story. the big box sites have rules. these rules may have been originally come from a place of good intentions, but they never stopped. certain words, images, and even thoughts which do not fit into the hug box narrative of the site are voted down, silenced, and even banned outright to prevent such ideas from reaching people. have you ever read the talk page on a controversial article on wikipedia? few, if anyone ever does except for those members who have a vested interest in the page they wish to edit. talk pages are never ending arguments that go on for much longer than the actual article and usually finish when a sys-op appears and squashes the discussion. NOT NOTABLE is slapped on any dissenting opinion and that is that. same goes for youtube and any of the other big box sites.
go along to get along.
only losers and silly people go to "that" website.
think the correct thoughts.
the moderators have your best interests in mind.
the science is settled.
the majority disagree, so it must be you that is wrong.
say what we want and you shall receive karma.
AI bots may be behind the majority of this now, but human hands typed the code. human beings, with the poliical power or the money, are behind these ideas and continue to add more naughty words or disrespectful images to the algorithm as (undesirable) internet users come up with them. these people want those ideas gone for whatever reason they may have. the only difference in how they go about such removal is now the process of removing wrong think is automated.
and that is why main street is dead.