Your New Strategy for the Dead Internet + Slow Social Era

AI slop, nostalgia culture, and collapsing discovery are reshaping the internet, and what it means to be human.

Author

Shira Lazar
November 23, 2025

Something is shifting online. Content discovery feels weaker. Search produces more repetitive results. Trends rise and fall so fast that they barely feel real. People are not just noticing these changes. They are adjusting their behavior. They are looking for ways to escape the speed of the online world and move through it more slowly, or disconnect altogether. 

My hot take: The more artificial the internet becomes, the more human people are choosing to be. Gen Z isn’t buying record players, camcorders, and flip phones because they’re “retro”, they’re using nostalgia as a strategy. Analog is becoming a filter for what feels real.

A major part of this shift connects to the modern version of Dead Internet Theory. 

The original idea was a fringe claim that bots had replaced most humans online. The updated version is different, and backed by real research. It argues that the internet is filling up with machine-generated content at a speed humans can’t compete with. Large platforms and search engines are producing a significant amount of what we see. The result? The internet feels full on the surface but empty underneath. It becomes harder to find real people and harder to discover original ideas.

And when the online world feels synthetic, repetitive, and impossible to navigate… it starts to feel, well, “dead.”

The data makes this real. A Stanford report in 2024 showed that AI content was already affecting search results by pushing human-written pages lower. In 2025, Pew Research found that most Americans had seen AI-generated news in their feeds without realizing it. 

This changes more than how the internet looks, it changes how people discover creators, ideas, and communities. Joe Pulizzi describes this in The AI and Content Conundrum, warning that as devices begin auto-generating personalized content, discovery will shrink. Creators, publishers and brands who don’t have direct relationships with their audiences will struggle to stay visible.

But while the digital world becomes more synthetic, people are shifting in the opposite direction. Lia Haberman wrote about this in her newsletter ICYMI: We are in our Slow Social era. She highlights the popularity of no-phone gatherings, unplugging as a luxury, and the rising appeal of having no followers at all. These signals show that people want experiences that feel grounded, meaningful, and immune to the algorithm.

And nostalgia is part of that.

Vogue Business reports that 70% of Gen Z is interested in attending in-person brand activations, and 72% of those who attend say the experience improves their view of the brand. The American Psychological Association notes that digital fatigue is rising among young adults, with many turning to analog activities such as journaling, crafts, in-person meetups, and community-centered hobbies as a result.

Even creators are tapping into this reversal. One of my favorite AI education creators, CatGPT, went viral for creating her own bluetooth landline phone, called Physical Phones, which is hilarious, brilliant, and honestly… a perfect holiday gift.

We’re standing in a perfect storm: AI slop taking over feeds, Dead Internet Theory feeling less like a theory and more like a diagnosis, and new research showing what nonstop screen time does to our brains.

In this reality, the real privilege won’t be access, it will be the ability to take a break. The next status symbol won’t be going viral. It will be having the nervous system to walk away.

The creators, brands, and everyday people who win the next decade will be the ones who can protect their attention, choose intentionality over constant posting, and build things that feel unmistakably human in a synthetic world.

The future belongs to the people who know when to log off. As for me? I’m getting better at it, slowly.

Other headlines to check out:

AI

Creator Economy

🎧 New Episode of The AI Download: NVIDIA, AI Mania and What’s Next: Einstein of Wall Street Explains Everything

In this week’s episode of The AI Download, I sat down with Peter Tuckman, the “Einstein of Wall Street”, to unpack what’s really happening with Nvidia, AI stocks and the so-called “mania” around this moment.

From decades on the NYSE floor to going viral with iShowSpeed, Peter breaks down why wild valuations and sharp pullbacks don’t automatically signal a bubble, how social media and retail traders are reshaping market behavior, and why he believes we’re still early, second inning early, in the AI revolution. We also get into what drives earnings reactions, the trillion-dollar data-center buildout, and how everyday investors can participate without getting lost in fear or FOMO.

🎙️ Listen now and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts!

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