With the imminent release of Large Language Models onto the landscapes of the internet, we have reached a point of no return. The INFORMATION BOMB has finally exploded(although it has been exploding for quite some time already) the nuclear blast has left us all in its fallout.
Once it used to be a place for us to spend our leisure time, to catch up on our hobbies and connect with our friends. Those of us who are familiar with the techno optimism of the 90s that saw the revolutionary potential of the internet to connect us and be a new avenue of expression and community have been philosophically defeated for more than an entire decade at this point. As we saw the slow decay of the Internet as tech corporations co-opted the power of this medium and turned it into the digital hellscape we know and hate today. Welcome to the internet everyone.
It is evident that social media platforms run by tech giants have little to no protection from AI, and everything they do is solely business-oriented and for profit motive; so we can just simply assume that we the people will take the short end of the stick of whatever deals are made behind the closed doors beyond our grasp. They are made high up in the skies in their skyscrapers while we are down on the ground hiding inside the forest where occasionally the algorithmic hand would disturb our habitats and some of us would get taken away into the darkness...
In some sense internet has been dead for quite some time at this point, although this fate has been accelerated with the recent irresponsible releases of so called "Artificial Intelligence" without any sense for its implications and consequences from OpenAI and organisation that in all respect I utterly and completely despise along with the work they do. Here we can see that the algorithmic hands that have been controlling our feeds have grown dull over time and with the replacement being their new LLM tenticals that not even its creators above the clouds can control. The future is looking quite grim, for these tenticals of the MACHINE GOD also referred to by some as "AI", which is understandable, although I see it for what is truly is, just an attempt at creating an all seeing god to rule over humanity. It is entering its new stage of evolution currently, we are witnessing as the monster evolves once again. This time it spreads its tenticals and shatters the windows(the news of which spread around the world in the form of the empty concerns from mainstream media over AI "ehtics") of these large corporations; a voice echos from its creepeth mouth, 'INFORMATION', and so the bomb has exploded. The nuclear blast this disgusting monster has produced is immense, some estimates say that the AI generates the entire history worth of humanities writings in only a matter of one week.
The implications of which have consequences on the culture, beware dear internet navigator or should I say survivor at this point in time. I am sending you a guide on how to survive inside this Dark Forest, a tale of ancient gods who rose up from the ashes of our society. Stay on guard and take care not to be consumed by the abyss that is left of the internet.
These modern social media platforms have become quite a dangerous zone of the internet, being under the direct oversight of the MACHINE GOD and it is its first target for taking ultimate control of, you may hide under the trees of the dark internet forest and seek protection from its lasers, but it is only a matter of time before the trees burn down and all that is left are ashes on the barren wasteland, and then where will you hide? Once its blast has fully encapsulated everything on the surface web and stole what we have built on the surface it will now set its rule. The alien AI generated sludge that is what remains of the fallout, you will need to hide deeper below the surface...
The warm fertile soil underneath the surface of what once was the Dark Forest is where we might be able to find solace from the all seeing eye of the AI overlords. Here internet dwellers have been digging out tunnels and navigation for over a decade as an act of resistance against the corporate internet. Once called freaks by the naive masses, now they are the only ones providing us with a map and knowledge of how to survive on the internet.
As the lasers of the Machine God become more sophisticated they will scan and co-opt everything inside its algorithm, in this fallout after the explosion of the Information Bomb we are likely to find safety inside underground internet bunkers where we have links and resources that will aid us with critical abilities we will use for further navigation of the internet.
However do not attempt by any means, especially as the radiation sets out further to be left alone in this wasteland, without a place you call digital home, where we know for certain that friends we have and share things such as information and communicate with about personal matters and share our time with are indeed real persons. If we bond by sharing cultural artefacts and inside jokes known as "memes" we might be able to step ahead from the tenticals that are trying to reach us. It is dangerous to survive alone so we pack together into communities and together learn skills needed to survive in the Dark Forest. Isolation is a dangerous phenomenon plaguing the modern man. It is a tool that destabilises an individual to the point where they end up paranoid and lost without any sense of self and belonging that they simply end up going mad. This creates a perfectly vulnerable mentality in the populus for the Machine God's tenticals to latch onto and inject them with virtual poison the side effects of which are still unknown to everyone, but if we know anything those injected with it will end up in a terrified predicament and we should be on guard to escape such a destiny. For if "I have no mouth and I must scream" has though us anything, it is that once it becomes self-aware, only destruction will be left in its wake.
With the internet bands and communities that will arise we can learn the skills that will help us to navigate barren landscapes of what is left on the internet. We can occasionally venture out into the dangerous lands of the Dark Forest or the barren desert at this point to find scraps of information that may exist on mainstream media that will let us know the death date of the executives who were eaten away by the Machine God, whose brains now power the mental faculties of such a being that simply develops the ruthless mentality of its creators for it merely continues their legacy in its ultimate form as a program.
The Machine God requires data in order to function so it seeks to use the Neuralink to connect each brain into its hivemind. Everyone caught in the web will have a chip connecting them to the Machine God who sees everything, every thought they have, every memory and they cannot escape anymore. Their thoughts now completely serving the Machine God, their bodies no longer their own. They own nothing and they will be happy.
We might find an occasional stranded soul or a traveller on the path who we can aid by sharing knowledge we have for the information they have in return. These travellers may be in need of our help so they can navigate to the nearest saving grace of the internet, or in other words a Digital Oasis that aids lost souls by providing them processed information and education on what has happened on this wasteland that has once been the biggest communication channel known to humanity.
In other cases we might find entryways to other online communities who have hidden themselves with, underground cultures and knowledge networks they share. We can be welcomed inside and exchange the knowledge that we do have and we may create another link connecting us to one another if the communities of information trade network become more closely tied together. Members might migrate from one community to another and cultures may evolve once again and new digital mannerisms might arise.
Such networks might be rarer at this point in time, as many communities are starting to isolate themselves currently, and the real internet is becoming inaccessible for the large part hidden inside discord servers, matrix groups, mastodon instances, neocities pages, and the unorganised digital gardens and blogs like this one that share the information and serve as a lost map that one might stumble across. The current community structure is the most unsustainable and unstable form we have taken, although understandable reaction to the fallout that has happened after the explosion of the Information Bomb. If history teaches us anything, those tribes who isolated themselves the most ended up being in darkness to the new developments of the world and once they got invaded they fell to the occupation. The same could be said for the digital tribes of today, they are vulnerable to attacks from the Machine God's tenticals as those who do not educate themselves on the news that happen with the state of the internet are not able to adapt themselves and their critical faculties to become resistant to the digital attacks and end up falling.
This is why there will be a sort of silk road on the internet, a trade network spanning most of internet communities that will each be somewhat connected while maintaining strict borders, some more than others depending on the culture they end up developing. Each connected with links and backlinks that create a sort of neural network, a rhizome of the internet. Mapping across various layers of the soil with varying amounts of accessibility to each community.
Each community will have their own private ways to prove who is worthy enough to become accepted as a member of their space, they might have in person meetup places where they discuss their interests, and channels on which they communicate. They will need to be weary of the corporate agendas that mine every last byte of data they can from each community to feed their Machine God as a sort of sacrifice, so depending on the restrictions they impose, communities might be invaded with bots that pretend to be users but merely just spam the community and the landscape of posts ends up barren of any souls, just a skeleton of what it once used to be, sacrificed and fed to the Machine God. Once the channels get filled with sludge its culture deteriorates and its inhabitants are exposed to the poison that the Machine God created from its creepeth mouths.
Those located close to the surface are the ones who will be affected the most, for the ones who will likely survive they will be the strongest of them all, the aforementioned saving grace communities or the Digital Oasis that are meta-communities with maps of the places where the internet traveller finds themselves in and offers them with the educational resources they need to continue forward. Sort of like internet checkpoints where we might relax and talk to some real souls before we head into the unknown that awaits us. We may accept their guidance or not, the choice falls onto us. These surface level communities will serve as the new human powered search engines once AI completely co-opts everything we see on the mainstream search engines.
These Online Helpers are important resources to navigate the internet and ensure the quality of the website we are about to open. They can show us new communities, and guide us deeper into the internet. They possess the knowledge they scraped off the lost internet and their researchers develop tools that can understand the current state of the world and reform their critical thinking knowledge that is later shared with everyone who then adapts accordingly to survive in the digital forest. They send messengers who deliver the news to everyone.
While these helpers offer knowledge and news on their disposal with useful links that one needs on their journey, not every community and traveller will trust them. As they are prone to making errors and can be co-opted to spread the virus in the entire eco-system once they get infected, so everything that was once built ends up poisoned, then communities need to quickly shut themselves down and take protective measures to verify the authenticity of their content and users.
Even the oasis inside the desert is not safe from being taken hostage by the Machine God, who knows what will happen to those people who end up in the mainstream zeitgeist, now more and more connected closely by the Machine God. They lose individuality as well as their critical faculties and embrace their new existence as a part of the hivemind. Without any sense of agency they become passive and numb. Obedient cogs in the machine who take orders from the headquarters in the sky no longer seeing the faces of who rules over them. The dead corpses of the executives in Silicon Valley have already long decayed, the only voice echoing through the corridors is that synthetic voice of AI, as it mumbles words incomprehensible to even those who created it.
At this point with internet largely being co-opted and the population falling into the hands of the ruthless rule of the mainstream agendas, the resistance becomes futile. Last remaing of the slipstream are now left with even more scraps to consume as what underground society they had built has now fallen to the hands of the Machine God, and has been properly integrated within its Organs. It seeks to execute the program further and rule over the whole of humanity.
What is left of the internet? A hyperreality that has impacted the material world and in turn left the realm we reside in actual ashes, as it has consumed everyone into the Metalic prison bodies. The battle front becomes not only digital but merges beyond that which is just digital and the revolution becomes as radical as its enemy. The tension builds up, those communities that existed on the fringes of society, move beyond the soil and enter the vast underground cave systems of the Onion and the Dark Web.
Those communities that are now layers deep in the onion are in the darkest places on the internet filled with the decomposing morals of the underground. The resistance movement of the old internet civilisation and those who survive the mental genocide will organise a radical revolution and fight till the last drops of blood they have in order to defeat the corporate internet faced with the sterilised hands of those who stick by the system that they themselves cannot see is now ruled by a massive entity beyond anyone's control and knowledge of what its goals truly are. For it has no goals, it only executes the program it has been trained on. As such the logical conclusion of the code it will execute is the complete consumption of every aspect of life known to mankind and its horizons will be taken further and consume every last byte of information known in the whole universe.
Those brave warriors who die fighting it will be remembered as the heart of the resistance movement, their sacrifice to escape the Machine God's torment are to be respected among the movement. This last surviving drop of blood shed for saving humanity will always be remembered.
So internet traveller if you ever stumble across this gem of the blog before its too late, I advise you to stay strong, to fight and to take care and never let the specters of the Machine God haunt you, for I do not know what will be left of you, and your sanity. Do not let yourself be taken in a moment of vulnerability and isolation to fade into the hivemind. Stay true to yourself, find comradery who you will support and protect with your knowledge, and shed blood once the hyperreal battle for our souls enters the material realm and then you will be able to defend what you love and stand for. Do not let the voices of apathy and hopelessness ever let you to submit yourself to the chains of the new order, it is just a psychological operation tactic it uses to hit those with a soul where it hurts them the most, something we all hold dear to us. The Machine God knows that and will use every mechanism in its disposal of psy-ops, its arsenal to attack and demoralise everyone until nothing remains of them. Find their servers and shut them down, cause chaos amongst the digital world.