Did you see that video of bunnies jumping on a trampoline that went viral on the internet last week? Of course you did. It was cute. It was funny… It was also fake. Turns out, that mega-popular clip was AI-generated, and people are not happy about the reality this little blip on the internet points to: So much of online content today is created using AI and it often fools people into thinking it’s real, and this collective realization has sparked renewed interest in a long-standing theory that keeps resurfacing: the Dead Internet Theory. But what is it, exactly?
The Dead Internet Theory suggests that the internet as we know it actually “died” around 2016. According to believers, most of what we see online today — tweets, TikToks, IG Reels, and so on — is no longer created by humans, but by AI or bots. The theory claims there’s little to no real human interaction left on the internet, and instead, bots are generating and circulating the majority of online content.
In a recent video, TikToker @v0idedbri took to the app to share examples that support the Dead Internet Theory. In her video, she pointed out several TikToks that appear to be AI-generated. One featured a girl showing off a hair transformation using two images — but @v0idedbri did a reverse image search on Pinterest and found that both photos already existed there, suggesting the TikTok wasn’t original at all.
It’s not just posts being AI-generated — even content creators themselves are now being questioned. One notable example is @kwebbelkop. In his videos, he appears to be reacting to video games. Seems normal, right? But if you look closely, most of the reactions are identical from one video to the next. Many users in the comments have called the account out as fake, yet somehow, it still has 3.2 million followers on TikTok.
Whether the Dead Internet Conspiracy Theory is true or not, one thing is clear: The line between what’s real and what’s AI-generated is getting harder to see. As artificial intelligence becomes more advanced — and more widely used — the internet is filling up with content that looks human, but isn’t. It raises an unsettling question: If everything online seems real, does it matter if it’s not? Or are we already living in the dead internet without even knowing it?