The Internet’s Not Dead, and I Can Prove It

Weaponizing Google reviews to demonstrate ChatGPT hasn't taken over (yet)

Most conspiracy theories don’t evolve much after their creation. 

Just seven years after the Apollo 11 mission, former U.S. Navy officer Bill Kaysing published the first known claim that the moon landing was staged by the government. In 2002, Buzz Aldrin, the second person to walk on the moon, was confronted by a conspiracist pushing the same narrative. Aldrin punched him in the face. 

And just this summer, Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, and Woody Harrelson starred in Fly Me to the Moon, a rom-com winking at this same decades-old notion that the government somehow faked the Apollo 11 mission. The nonbelievers were finally vindicated — NASA helped make the movie!

By comparison, the tenets of the Dead Internet theory have shifted a great deal in just a few years, which is a major reason why I find this conspiracy theory so fascinating.

The Dead Internet theory (DIT) began as a cr…