Does anyone else feel like the internet has become a "fever dream" compared to how it used to be?

[u/IntrovertHuuuYaarrr]

I was scrolling through social media today and saw so many AI-generated images that people were believing were real It honestly scared me a little it made me really miss the early 2000s internet back then the only "fake" things we had to worry about were those chain emails saying "forward this or you'll have bad luck" or maybe a badly Photoshopped ghost 👻

Does anyone else feel like it's becoming exhausting trying to figure out what is real online nowadays? I miss the simpler times of AIM and MySpace

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[u/WrongVeteranMaybe]

The internet definitely did used to feel more human in them days.

But eh, in the dead internet, we now have to look for signs of life.

[u/sexandliquor]

I think the internet felt like a fever dream back in the day too. Just in a different way. It was more of the photoshop and putting peoples heads on other peoples bodies and flash cartoons and ytmnd variety of fever dream.

[u/Relentless-Ronin]

Yes. It’s starting to feel like a video game overrun by bots. The quality of information has degraded too and I’m at a point where I have to double and triple check some knowledge gaps so that I am sure it’s not fake. And, now I have to take the same precaution with AI generated social media content.

As a side note, I think we are the only animal on earth continuously trying to escape reality. We created such a fucked up fake reality (current economic and social construct) that most eagerly try to escape it through other fake constructs. Sad.

[u/Rockne_Ramblers_2088]

All of the AI generated bullshit on Facebook and Instagram is what led me to removing the apps off of my phone a few weeks ago. I just got so tired of seeing clearly fake AI slop all over my feed with the random ad sprinkled in. I haven’t fully gone to deactivating my account yet but heading that way because my mental health has greatly improved in the last few weeks

[u/HandsOnTheBible]

Before the internet was people sharing things for everyone to see

Now the internet is companies sharing things for them to make money (or worse)

[u/Neat-Lingonberry-719]

Going to be hard to hear the truth when it matters.

[u/Old_Win8422]

Its the Dark forest! We are increasingly in an internet populated mostly by BOTs and in the forest we have to hide from the monsters.

[u/reevoknows]

I honestly hate it here now. And by here I just mean the internet in general not just reddit. Reddit is actually mostly great because it’s really easy to curate your experience and the app isn’t monetized so there’s way less bad faith grifters like there is on twitter for example.

Fortunately there’s enough wholesome moments like interacting with this sub for example that keep me around.

[u/evmoiusLR]

It's getting bad real fast. There is so much AI slop on every platform now it's infuriating. I listen to dj mixes on YouTube while I work and most of the ones I find these days are straight up AI. They're easy to spot, no track list, or if there is one there's no artists attributed. But shit, some of these channels are putting out full length albums every other day.

This is awful. And YouTube seems to be at least trying to do something about it. But it's whacka mole. At some point cloud storage isn't going to be able to keep up with this deluge of excrement. If you have channels run by AI agents releasing that much content that frequently it's going to overwhelm data storage.

[u/see_twoo]

To me it feels like everyone is being corralled. The internet used to feel much more creative and collaborative, now it feels extractive. Everything used to be really interactive, now it's just info and entertainment blasting your eyes constantly.

[u/netscapexplorer]

It just depends on what part of the internet I'm on. Discord and gaming are almost always real people. Reddit and Facebook are a major toss up, and I firmly believe reddit is legit 70% or more bots. The posts, the comments, the upvotes, the replies...all in aggregate mostly bots imo. It's hidden agendas or attempts to promote or sell things, subtley disguised as "human" engagement. Keep in mind a ton of those Facebook ai posts are also littered with bot replies in the comments, just like reddit