CONSPIRACY THEORY: Is Anyone Real Anymore? The Dead Internet Theory

October 5, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

In early 2024, if you scrolled through Facebook you would have eventually seen him: Jesus, standing on a beach with arms open wide, his entire body built out of hundreds of fused shrimp. One of these AI-generated images racked up 40 million views, with real users leaving comments like "Amen" and "so beautiful," unaware a machine had generated it. A network of fake accounts posted it, and Facebook's recommendation system pushed it into millions of feeds. Three years earlier, an anonymous user called Illuminati Pirate had described all of it almost perfectly on a small forum called Agora Road's Macintosh Cafe. He wrote that the internet had died, that most of what we see online is fake, and that machines had taken over the conversation. People called him paranoid. Then ChatGPT arrived, and the technology to flood the web with convincing fake content suddenly existed.

The theory and its two halves

Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.

Read Full Summary →

Free • No credit card required

Listen to Audio Summary Open in App

Never miss an episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes

Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.

No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.

What you'll learn

1 (00:36) **The Shrimp Jesus Phenomenon** - The episode opens with the bizarre AI-generated image of "Shrimp Jesus" that went viral on Facebook in early 2024, racking up 40 million views as real users commented "Amen," completely unaware it was machine-made.
2 (03:36) **Introducing the Dead Internet Theory** - The host defines the theory: the claim that the internet is fake, that the people you argue with online aren't real, and that this was done on purpose.
3 (05:36) **The Origin Story: Illuminati Pirate's 2021 Forum Post** - The theory began on a niche forum called Agora Road's Macintosh Cafe in early 2021.
4 (08:10) **Why 2016? The Feeling Behind the Theory** - The host explains why the 2016 date resonated, connecting it to the real-world revelation of the Russian Internet Research Agency's influence campaign.
5 (09:57) **The Theory Goes Mainstream** - In September 2021, writer Caitlin Tiffany published a piece in *The Atlantic* titled "Maybe You Missed It, but the Internet Died Five Years Ago."
6 (11:15) **The Prophecy Comes True** - Illuminati Pirate described an internet drowning in machine-made content in early 2021, nearly two years before ChatGPT was released to the public.
7 (13:48) **The Hard Evidence: Bots Outnumber Humans** - The host presents data from the cybersecurity company Imperva's 2025 Bad Bot Report.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

In 2021, an anonymous forum post floated a theory that sounded absurd: the internet effectively died around 2016, and most of what we now see online, the posts, comments, arguments, and trends, is generated by bots and AI designed to manipulate what we think, buy, and believe. People laughed, until the evidence started piling up. Bots surpassed human traffic online for the first time in 2024, more than a third of new websites are now AI-generated, and state actors run thousands of fake accounts to shape public opinion. With every passing month, the idea that the internet is fake looks less like a conspiracy theory and more like a description of reality. In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes, Vanessa examines the Dead Internet Theory, the mounting signs that much of the online world is no longer human, and the unsettling question of what happens to a society that can no longer tell the difference.

Head over to our YouTube channel to WATCH our video episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@crimehousestudios

If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes to never miss a case! To hear episodes ad-free and released a day early, subscribe to Crime House+. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios.

🎧 Need More to Binge?

Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of Reddit, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, Murder True Crime Stories and more wherever you get your podcasts!

Follow me on Social