Every few years the internet collectively rediscovers an old conspiracy theory. This month it has been the so-called “Dead Internet Theory”. The idea, put simply, is that most of what we now encounter online is no longer produced by humans but by bots, scripts, and automated systems. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, recently hinted that he thought there might be something in it, which was enough to trigger a storm of hot takes across Twitter. So what exactly does this “death” mean, and is there anything to it?