AI Slop Might Finally Cure Our Internet Addiction
Or, in the midst of an emotionally fraught conversation with a friend or family member, a text might read strangely. Is the person on the other end using AI to compose their messages about the fairness of Aunt Beryl's will or the future of your relationship? The only way to find out is to call them or, better yet, meet them for a coffee.
Or maybe you want to learn something. Many of the internet's best resources for getting everyday answers are quickly being inundated with the dubious wisdom of AI. YouTube, long a destination for real people who know how to repair toilets, make omelets, or deliver engaging cultural criticism, is getting less human by the day: The newsletter Garbage Day reports that four of May's top 10 YouTube channels were devoted to AI-generated content. Recently, the fastest-growing channel featured AI babies in dangerous situations, for some reason. Reddit is currently overrun with AI-generated posts. Even if you never use ChatGPT or other large language models directly, the rest of the internet is sodden with their output and with real people parroting their hallucinations. Remember: LLMs are still often wrong about basic facts. It is enough to make a person crack a book.
The internet's slide toward AI happened quickly and deliberately. Most major platforms have integrated the technology whether users want it or not, just at the moment that some AI photos and videos have become indistinguishable from reality, making it that much harder to trust anything online. Over time, LLMs might get more accurate, or people might simply get better at spotting their tells. In the meantime, a real possibility is that people will turn to the real world as a more trustworthy alternative. We've been telling one another to 'touch grass' for years now, all while downloading app- and website-blocking software and lockable phone safes to try to wean ourselves off constant internet use. Maybe the AI-slop era will actually help us log off.
Even before AI started taking over, the internet had been getting less and less fun for a while. Users have been complaining about Google Search degrading for years. Opening an app to get a ride, order takeout, or find a vacation house can be just as expensive and effortful as taking a taxi, calling in a delivery order, or booking a hotel once was. Social media is a grotesque, tragedy-exploiting, MechaHitler-riddled inferno. Where going online once evoked a wide-eyed sense that the world was at our fingertips, now it requires wading into the slop like weary, hardened detectives, attempting to parse the real from the fake.
Nevertheless, as AI companies build browsers and devices that keep users tidily contained in an endless conversation with their own personalized AIs, some people may spend more time online than ever. Its accuracy aside, AI is already valued by many for entertainment, practical help, and emotional support. In some extreme cases, users are falling in love with chatbots or drifting into all-consuming spiritual delusions, but many more are simply becoming thoroughly addicted. The internet's new era may push AI skeptics to spend less time online, while another group ramps up their AI-mediated screen time. That split might have implications for the internet's culture—and the culture at large.
Even for those who run from the slop, the internet is already so woven into every part of our lives that going cold turkey is pretty much impossible. But as it gets worse, the real world starts to look pretty good in comparison, with its flesh-and-blood people with whom we can establish trust, less overwhelming number of consumer options, slower pace, and occasional moments of unpredictable delight that do not create financial profit for anyone.
I have been experimenting with being less online since 2022, when I quit Twitter. As soon as I got through withdrawal, I could feel my attention span start to expand. I started reading books again. Like a lot of people who left social media, more of my socializing moved over to group chats with people I actually know and in-person get-togethers: quick coffees and camping trips and dinner parties. Remember dinner parties?
Later, I quit shopping online, and soon realized that I didn't need most of what I had been buying. The majority of the stuff I actually did need, I could get at the grocery store and my local hardware store, which, like most hardware stores, carries tons of things besides wrenches and bolts.
Online shopping might have once been more convenient than schlepping to a store, but I think that's no longer true in many cases. Last winter, when my feet were chronically cold under my desk, I could have spent hours researching space heaters online, trying to guess which reviews were real and which were fake; placed an order online; possibly received a broken or substandard unit; and then had to package it back up and take it to some random third-party store in a return process designed to be annoying. Instead, I walked to the hardware store. 'We have one that oscillates and one that doesn't,' the guy in the vest told me. I took the one that oscillates. It works fine.
I am not, I hasten to say, completely offline. Like most people, my job requires me to use the internet. But I am online less. And I am happier for it. I get outside more. I garden and read more books. I still follow the news, but less compulsively. Spending some parts of my day without my attention being monetized or my data being harvested is a nice bonus. It makes me feel kind of like a line-dried bedsheet smells.
I find myself dreaming about additional returns to offline existence. I live in Portland, Oregon, where we still have lots of movie theaters and even a video-rental place. I could—I might—cancel all my streaming services and just rent stuff and watch movies at the theater. I could even finally assuage my guilt over the lousy way music-streaming services pay musicians and avoid being fooled by AI bands by going back to CDs and records—and by seeing more artists play live. I don't think I'll be the only one reorienting toward physical media and physical presence: books and records, live theater and music, brick-and-mortar stores with knowledgeable salespeople, one long conversation with one real person instead of 300 short interactions with internet strangers who might be robots.
Tech companies may assume that the public is so habituated—or even addicted—to doing everything online that people will put up with any amount of risk or unpleasantness to continue to transact business and amuse themselves on the internet. But there is a limit to what at least some of us will take, especially when the alternative has real appeal. One recent study shows that disconnecting your phone from the internet creates a mood boost on par with pharmaceutical antidepressants. And if more people explore offline alternatives—at least until this whole generative-AI explosion works itself out—it could create a feedback loop, livening up cities and communities, which then become a more tempting alternative to screens. What the internet will become in a post-AI world is anybody's guess. Maybe it'll finally become something transcendent. Or maybe, as the conspiracy theory
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9 Celebrities Who Died In Strange, Mysterious Ways
It's always been fascinating to me how, as a celebrity or public figure, you can live your whole life under the microscope of for your death to be shrouded in mystery, and — in some cases — still unsolved decades later. Or, like others, you become famous because of your death, only reaching the goal of celebrity when you're no longer able to bask in it. Recently, I came across a thread on Reddit where u/the_last_lemurian asked people to share celebrity deaths that were so mysterious, people spent literal hours thinking about them. Based on their suggestions, I spent hours going down rabbit holes myself, summarizing these cases of strange, mysterious, or unsolved celebrity deaths that I, too, cannot get out of my head now. Here are nine of the strangest, most fascinating, and most-suggested celebrity deaths they shared: George Reeves (1914–1959). Reeves, best known for playing the titular character in Adventures of Superman, died on June 16 from a gunshot wound to the head. Officially, it was ruled as a suicide, but in conjunction with a lack of evidence, suspicious circumstances, and contradictory witness reports, his friend Rory Calhoun reportedly said, "No one in Hollywood believed the suicide story." On the night of his death, Reeves and his fiancé, Leonore Lemmon, had been out drinking, and Reeves went to bed as Lemmon invited friends over. Reeves was said to have come downstairs to ask the group to quiet down, and as he left, Lemmon reportedly joked that he was "going upstairs to shoot himself." The group heard a noise coming from upstairs but didn't immediately check it. Here is where the inconsistencies begin. Despite the apparent suicide, no fingerprints — not even Reeves's — were found on the gun, and Reeves didn't have gunpowder on his hands. Additionally, Lemmon and her friends only reported hearing one bang, but there were three bullets found at the scene, as well as a casing whose placement wasn't consistent with a suicide. Pictured: Lenore Lemmon (left) Despite the ruling, three main theories came to be: that Reeves was depressed about a lack of roles post-Superman and killed himself, that it was a drunken accident and Lemmon killed him, and that it was a planned murder in relation to an affair he had reportedly had with actor Toni Mannix. "The fact that he played such a beloved character like Superman but was found dead under such mysterious circumstances makes you wonder if it really was a suicide or if it was something more sinister. Like, imagine if tomorrow they found Chris Evans dead by a gun that doesn't have his fingerprints on it, with no gunshot residue on his hands, and it's just ruled a suicide? That would be wild."—sun4restYou can read more about his death here. Natalie Wood (1938–1981). On Nov. 30, 1981, Wood's body was found off the coast of Santa Catalina Island, where she'd been vacationing with her husband, Robert Wagner, her Brainstorm costar Christopher Walken, and friend/captain, Dennis Davern, on a yacht. The West Side Story actor — who was said to be "famously terrified of dark water," was found floating about 200m away from a motorized dinghy in the early hours of the morning. Initially, reports assumed the death was accidental; however, the story got much more complicated over the years as stories and timelines changed with new information. Per Wagner's memoir, Pieces of My Heart, he claims he, Wood, and Walken returned to the boat that night at around 10 after wining and dining on land. Witnesses said the trio was visibly intoxicated. Back on the boat, Davern said Wagner smashed a bottle in front of Wood and Walken "out of the clear blue," asking, "What are you tryin' to do, f--- my wife?" The Rebel Without a Cause actor reportedly left and went to her room, with her husband following, where they began arguing. Davern claimed it sounded as though it could be physical, and said they continued out on the back of the boat. This information came years after Wood's death. Davern shared this with investigators in 2011, which reopened the case and brought Wagner back into question. In 2012, her cause of death was amended from accidental drowning to "drowning and other undetermined factors." Nonetheless, after years of additional investigation, Wagner was cleared, and the case was left open and unsolved. Pictured: Wagner (left) and Wood (right)Suggested by: Toxicity246"Christopher Walken KNOWS SOMETHING."—Longjumping-Ant-77"[The boat] was around 60 feet, and on a boat that size, you can hear everything that is going on. A huge fight would have been heard, as would have the sudden silence of the fight ending. Robert's actions seem very suspicious. But we will never know, unless Christopher talks, which he won't."—NoneThere's so much information and speculation around this case that it truly could be its own article and is by no means all covered in this brief summary. If you'd like to read more about it, you can start here and here. Brittany Murphy (1977–2009). On Dec. 20, 2009, the 32-year-old Uptown Girls star collapsed on her bathroom floor and just hours later, was pronounced dead at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in LA. Her coroner's report later showed pneumonia as her cause of death, and listed anemia and multiple drug intoxication as "contributing factors." Following her death, both her mother and her husband, Simon Monjack, made a rather strange appearance together on Larry King Live. Further, Murphy had lived with the two of them while she was alive, and they continued to live together in her home after her death. 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While two others they traveled with — who were native to the region and familiar with the hostility of the river — made it to shore to find aid, Rockefeller and Wassing stayed atop the overturned boat. Rockefeller was reportedly worried they would float into the open ocean with even less of a chance of survival, so he attached a make-shift flotation device to his belt and jumped in. The swim to shore was estimated to be somewhere between three and ten miles. Wassing stayed behind and was rescued the following morning by search parties. Two weeks' worth of search parties scoured the region, though he was never found, dead or alive. Pictured: Wassing This disappearance, of course, created a breeding ground for theories as to how specifically he met his demise. Some are simple and straightforward, like drowning. Others suggest Rockefeller abandoned society and joined the Asmat tribe that called the region home, claiming to have photographic evidence of a white man amongst them. Others, however, believe Rockefeller sought help from the Otsjanep (a subgroup of the Asmats) when he reached land and was ultimately killed and eaten by them. You can read more about his disappearance by: laufsteakmodel Elizabeth Short (1924–1947). Also posthumously known as "The Black Dahlia," Short was a 22-year-old aspiring actress when her body was found on a "barely developed" Los Angeles street, naked, bloodless, sliced in half, and positioned like a mannequin. Per BBC, "she had been mutilated, her intestines removed, and her mouth slashed from ear to ear." Her case, unfortunately, remains unsolved to this day. There are tons of theories involving Short's death, which range greatly due to the sheer lack of information. The FBI speculates that her killer might've worked in or studied medicine, given the precision of her dissection, and students at USC Medical School at the time were looked into. For similar reasons, they also could've been a butcher, though neither lane led them anywhere in the end. In what they hoped would be a breakthrough, investigators got an anonymous letter from the potential murderer with fingerprints on it, though they weren't a match to any in their database at the time. Suggested by: robj57You can read more about her murder here. Elliott Smith (1969–2003). On Oct. 21, 2003, Smith and his girlfriend, Jennifer Chiba, were fighting in their LA apartment when he threatened to kill himself. This wasn't something out of the blue for Smith, and so Chiba reportedly locked herself in the bathroom in the heat of their she heard a scream. She unlocked the door to find a kitchen knife lodged in his chest, stabbing him right in the heart. He died just 20 minutes after arriving at the hospital. While an apparent suicide note reading "I'm sorry, love, Elliott. God forgive me." was found on a sticky note, Smith's death was still considered suspicious for many reasons, and investigators struggled with whether to rule it a suicide or a murder. First and foremost, a stab to the heart is one of the rarest and most painful ways to commit suicide, though that didn't make it impossible for him to have done so. What was unusual, however, was that Smith had no "hesitation wounds," or initial, shallower cuts typically inflicted before the final wound, and had small, potential self-defense wounds. Further, Chiba had reportedly removed the knife from his body and, though she personally denied this, it was reported that she refused to speak to detectives initially. While some may blame his suicide on his drug addiction or depression, Smith was reportedly doing well in the time leading up to his death and had been clean. No substances aside from his prescribed medications for depression and ADHD were found in his system at the time of his death. That's not to say his lifelong depression — which, along with his addiction, were often topics of his music — couldn't have played a major role in his potential some friends and colleagues of Smith claimed that his relationship with Chiba was nowhere near as peaceful as others had made it out to be, reporting constant fighting, breaking up, and tense feelings between the two (and Chiba's band) as collaborators. Others, however, countless theories, as of 2003 the case remains open with the by Zukez, interprime, and obi-sean. You can read more about it here. Anton Yelchin (1989–2016). The Star Trek actor died in June of 2016 in a freak accident in which he was pinned between his fence and mailbox on his Los Angeles property by his 2015 Jeep Cherokee. The car had been recalled just months earlier for having confusing gear shifters that had, on more than one occasion, caused the vehicle to roll off. This, too, was believed to have been the cause of his death. Per the lawsuit, he "was crushed and lingered alive for some time, trapped and suffocating until his death." Suggested by: DaveDavidsen. You can read more about his death here. Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962). The 36-year-old Hollywood icon's death in August of 1962 is shrouded in mystery and conspiracy, even all these decades later. This, of course, includes the events leading up to her death. Per a 1962 Los Angeles Times article, the Gentlemen Prefer Blondes star's psychiatrist broke into her room at 3:30 in the morning and found her naked, facedown, and "clutching a telephone receiver" in bed. She had reportedly already been dead for somewhere between six to eight hours due to an "apparent overdose of sleeping pills," and investigators were uncertain whether it was accidental or a suicide. A second timeline of events was proposed in the documentary The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes, based on "hundreds of interviews," aimed to get to the bottom of inconsistencies in the original story. It suggested that — per the word of several paramedics and the wife of Monroe's PR manager — it was actually known that Monroe was unwell hours earlier (10:30 p.m. the night before), and that she was taken in the ambulance alive and died on the way to the hospital. Regardless, the reason for her death — and whether it was accidental, a suicide, or a staged homicide — remains a mystery. There are probably hundreds of conspiracy theories surrounding the nature of it all, from her romantic entanglements with JFK and Robert Kennedy to CIA involvement over fear of her harboring Communist connections. "She had been sleeping with some very elite people, who knew some very elite information."—prettyvoidofevilYou can read more about her death here, as well as the aforementioned documentary here. And finally, Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849). On the 27th of September, Poe left Richmond, Virginia, for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for an editing job. never made it there. Nor was he seen in New York, where he lived. He wasn't found at all, in fact, for almost a week. When the legendary author did turn up once again, he was in Baltimore, Maryland. It was Oct. 3, four days before his death. Poe was found lying in the gutter of Gunner's Hall tavern, delirious, disheveled, and dressed in someone else's clothing. His friends assumed him to be drunk, so he was sent to Washington College Hospital to recover. While there, he drifted in and out of consciousness, covered in sweat and talking to seemingly imaginary things nobody else could see. He was unable to adequately answer the physician's questions and was reported to have repeatedly asked for someone by the name of "Reynolds" on his final day in the hospital. To this day, no one knows who "Reynolds" is. There are loads of theories as to what exactly happened to the Tell-Tale Heart author, from suspicions of carbon monoxide poisoning to rabies. One of the most popular theories, though, is that Poe was "cooped." Cooping was a method 19th-century gangs would use to rig elections by kidnapping people, disguising them, forcing them to vote for their preferred candidate, then "rewarding" them with alcohol, as this occurred during Prohibition. Poe was found on Election Day, and the tavern had been a polling site. He ultimately passed away at the hospital on Oct. 7. While the theory definitely carries its weight, unfortunately, we will likely never know for certain what happened to Poe that by: Rigistroni and Blametheorangejuice. You can read more about Poe's death here. 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Splitgate 2 is yanked back to beta a month after release
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