Sam Altman, the man who helped turn the internet into a theme park run by robots, has finally confessed what the rest of us figured out years ago: the place feels fake. He scrolls through Twitter or Reddit and assumes it’s bots. Of course he does. It’s like Willy Wonka walking through his own chocolate factory and suddenly realizing everything tastes like diabetes.

The CEO of OpenAI worrying about bot-ridden discourse is like Ronald McDonald filing a complaint about childhood obesity. You built the thing, Sam. You opened the door and shouted “Release the clones!” and now you’re clutching your pearls because the clones are crowding the buffet.

The bots have won, and the humans are complicit

Here’s the real kicker: Altman says people now sound like AI. No kidding. Spend five minutes online and you’ll see humans writing in the same hollow, autocorrect tone as the machines. Every Instagram caption looks like it was generated by a motivational fridge magnet. Every tweet sounds like it was written by a marketing intern with a concussion.

This isn’t evolution. It’s mimicry. Like parrots squawking human words, we’ve started squawking algorithmic filler. Our personalities are being laundered through engagement metrics until we all sound like bot cousins trying to sell protein powder.

Dead Internet Theory goes corporate

For years, conspiracy theorists have whispered about the “Dead Internet Theory” the idea that most of what you see online is written by bots, not people. Altman just rolled into the morgue, peeled back the sheet, and muttered, “Hmm, looks lifeless.” What he forgot to mention is that he’s the one leasing out the coffins. AI companies aren’t worried the internet is fake. They’re building the next tier of fakery and charging subscription fees for the privilege.

So congratulations. The paranoid meme kids were right. The internet is a corpse dressed in flashing ads, propped up by click-farms, and serenaded by bots. And instead of cutting the cord, Silicon Valley is selling tickets to the wake.

The real problem isn’t bots

It’s incentives. Platforms reward sludge. If you spew enough generic engagement bait — “This billionaire said THIS about AI. Thoughts?” the algorithm slaps a medal on your chest and boosts you into everyone’s feed. Humans, desperate for attention, start acting like bots to compete. The lines blur. Who’s real? Who’s synthetic? No one cares, as long as the dopamine hits.

And that’s the rot. It’s not that AI makes the internet fake. It’s that humans are happy to fake themselves to survive inside it. We’re not just scrolling a dead internet. We’re rehearsing our own funerals in real time.

The coffin is already polished

So yes, Sam, the internet is fake. It’s been fake since the first influencer pretended their kitchen counter was a five-star resort. You’re just noticing now because your reflection is staring back at you. You built the machine, you fed it our words, and now it spits them back at you like a funhouse mirror. Distorted. Recycled. Dead.

The internet didn’t die naturally. It was murdered. And the suspects are still running the gift shop.