I’m doomscrolling Reddit.
Every post is either political ragebait, recycled “funny” cat videos, “Am I the asshole for divorcing my husband after he killed our two children while drunk and high?”-type slop, or tired wojack memes.
Then, finally: an authentic, human-sounding title.
“Anyone else feel like the internet is just… broken now?”
The post has nearly 6,000 upvotes, hundreds of comments, and an unsettling sense of genuine despair:
“Everything online feels either like an ad, a hustle, or someone desperately trying to go viral. Nothing feels real anymore.”
It resonates deeply. But as I read further, something nags at the back of my mind. The wording, the rhythm is too perfectly calibrated, suspiciously optimized to trigger maximum relatability. I click on the poster’s username.
Their profile is a barren wasteland of karma-farming garbage: viral pet clips, recycled feel-good stories, endless reposted memes. They churn out multiple threads daily yet never engage in comments. Typical bot behavior.
Returning to the original post, the last sentence catches my eye:
“This was written in 1928—it’s incredible how it predicted the moment we’re living in today and where we’re heading.”
The sentence is underlined, and colored blue: it’s a hyperlink. Embedded neatly into the text, it uses a shortened domain “rddit.org”. At first it seems legit. Platforms do shorten links for tracking and branding, after all. Twitter has t.co, Facebook uses fb.me. Makes sense Reddit might have something similar.
Yet I’ve never noticed Reddit using “rddit.org” before. Curiosity, perhaps paranoia, drives me to a quick WHOIS lookup.
Turns out “rddit.org” isn’t owned by Reddit. It’s registered anonymously via a cheap freemium link shortener. It could redirect anywhere. I know better than to click shady links on Reddit…
I click it.
I’m swiftly redirected to Amazon, landing on a listing for a modern, illustrated edition of Edward L. Bernays’ classic: “Propaganda.” And there it is, undeniable in the URL bar: the affiliate tag, “manwithhairwe-20”.
The book has thirteen oddly generic reviews. After clicking my way to the illustrator’s Amazon profile, the truth emerges: the seller specializes in selling classic texts freshly “enhanced” with AI-generated art.
An AI-powered bot pretending to be a human, lamenting AI-powered bots who pretend to be human, to gain human trust, so that it can covertly market AI-illustrated books. The Trojan horse of late-stage capitalism, cyberpunk dystopia and fuckity-fuck-what-the-fuck-is-going-on.
I scroll back to the comments. There’s hundreds of users interacting, none apparently noticing the ruse. The top comment mentions something called “Dead Internet Theory”: the belief that most online interactions are automated loops of bots communicating with eachother.
The irony hits like a train. Did anyone commenting realize they were trying to engage with a bot designed to monetize their empathy? Maybe they were also bots, spiraling endlessly into their algorithmically optimized oblivion?
Sorting by controversial, I find one tiny, nearly invisible, buried comment:
Is this commenter the only other surviving human? Or just another bot, designed to provoke more comments, more engagement?
My browser tabs multiply frantically. Reddit melts into conspiracy forums, WHOIS lookups, and archived Amazon profiles. Everything is spinning.
A bot selling fake empathy to promote fake products through a fake sense of community.
Maybe nothing is real anymore.
Was my spiraling paranoia exactly what they wanted? To drive me insane, so that I click more frantically, driving engagement metrics higher?
Are they watching, judging my reaction whilst calibrating tomorrow’s psyop?
Quoting Orwell feels cliché:
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face imagine a bot making you sad and angry in order to farm engagement and sell you AI-generated slop–forever.”
