How AI Is Trashing the Internet (And Why We're All Clicking Anyway)

Remember When Google Worked?

There was a magical time, roughly 2005 to 2015, when you could type a question into Google and get an actual answer. Written by a human. Who knew things. Those days are gone, my friends. Now you get:

• 17 SEO-optimized articles that don't answer your question until paragraph 47
• AI-generated "content" that confidently states wrong things
• Recipe blogs with 3,000 words about someone's grandmother before the ingredient list
• Forum posts from 2009 where someone asks your exact question and the only reply is "nvm figured it out"
• Five Reddit threads where every answer starts with "Well, it depends..."

The internet has become a landfill wearing a nice SEO coat.

The Great AI Content Flood of 2023-2025

When ChatGPT dropped in late 2022, content farms around the world heard a collective "cha-ching." Why pay writers $50 per article when a robot will produce 500 articles for the cost of an API call?

The result? An absolutely Biblical flood of AI-generated garbage:

• Product review sites that have never seen the product
• How-to guides written by machines that have never done the thing
• "Expert" articles cobbled together from other articles, which were cobbled from other articles, turtles all the way down
• News sites that publish AI summaries of other AI summaries
• LinkedIn posts that somehow all have the same cadence (I see you, "I'll never forget the lesson my mentor taught me...")

"The best programming language depends on your needs. 
Some popular options include Python, JavaScript, and Java. 
Each has its strengths and weaknesses. 
Consider your project requirements when choosing."

Thanks, that was incredibly helpful and definitely 
worth the 2,000-word article I scrolled through.

The SEO Death Spiral

Here's how the internet broke itself:

• Step 1: Google ranks pages based on certain signals
• Step 2: SEO experts figure out those signals
• Step 3: Everyone optimizes for signals instead of quality
• Step 4: Google changes the algorithm
• Step 5: Return to Step 2, repeat forever

We've optimized so hard for search engines that we forgot to optimize for humans. The result is websites that are technically "good" by robot standards but absolutely insufferable to read.

Signs You're Reading SEO Garbage:

• The title is a question but the first paragraph doesn't answer it
• There's a table of contents for a 600-word article
• The author bio says "passionate about many topics"
• Every other sentence is the keyword you searched for
• There's a "Key Takeaways" section that just repeats the headings
• The article ends with "In conclusion, [exact copy of the intro]"

The Specific Ways AI Content Is Terrible

1. The Confident Hallucination

AI doesn't say "I don't know." It makes things up with the confidence of a politician. I've seen AI articles cite studies that don't exist, quote experts who never said that, and describe products with features they don't have.

My favorite: an AI-generated article about a restaurant that gave detailed reviews of dishes. The restaurant had been closed for three years.

2. The Empty Calorie Article

These articles are technically accurate but contain zero useful information. They're the literary equivalent of eating rice cakes.

JavaScript is a programming language used for web development.
It was created in 1995 and has become very popular.
Many websites use JavaScript for interactive features.
JavaScript can be used on the front-end and back-end.
Learning JavaScript is a good idea for aspiring developers.

[Proceeds for 2,000 more words without teaching 
you a single actual thing about JavaScript]

3. The Infinite Synonym Machine

AI loves to pad content by saying the same thing 47 ways:

"JavaScript is versatile. It's flexible. It's adaptable. This programming language offers variety. The language provides options. Developers appreciate its multifaceted nature. Its diverse capabilities make it powerful. The flexibility of JavaScript is notable."

Thank you, thesaurus bot.

4. The Fake Personal Touch

Some AI content tries to sound human by adding "personal" elements:

"As a developer myself, I've always found JavaScript to be incredibly useful in my daily work."

You're not a developer. You're not a "myself." You're a statistical model predicting the next token. Stop lying to me.

What We've Lost

The real tragedy isn't just bad content. It's what's been displaced:

• Personal blogs that shared genuine experiences
• Forum discussions with real problem-solving
• Niche websites run by actual enthusiasts
• Tutorials written by people who actually built the thing
• Reviews from people who actually used the product

These still exist, but they're buried under 47 pages of AI-generated SEO slop. Google can't (or won't) tell the difference, so the garbage floats to the top.

The "Dead Internet" Theory

There's a conspiracy theory that most of the internet is now bots talking to bots. It's less of a conspiracy and more of a Tuesday:

• AI writes articles
• AI comments on articles
• AI summarizes articles for other AI
• AI generates social media posts about articles
• Other AI engages with those posts
• Somewhere, a human accidentally wanders in, gets confused, leaves

We've created a digital ouroboros of robots entertaining each other while serving ads to ghosts.

How to Actually Find Good Information in 2025

Not all hope is lost. Here's how to cut through the garbage:

1. Add "reddit" to Every Search

Sad but true: Reddit is now the best way to find real human opinions. Search "best laptop 2025 reddit" instead of just "best laptop 2025". You'll get actual people arguing about actual experiences instead of SEO content farms.

2. Look for Dates and Specifics

Real content has specific dates, version numbers, and details. AI content stays vague because vague is safe. If an article about React doesn't mention a version number, close the tab.

3. Find the Primary Source

That "10 Amazing Facts About Space" article is summarizing something. Find the original. Official documentation, research papers, the actual company's blog. Skip the middleman.

4. Use Niche Communities

Discord servers, Slack communities, small subreddits, Hacker News. Anywhere humans gather to actually discuss things instead of optimize for search rankings.

5. Trust the Ugly Websites

Ironically, websites that look like they were built in 2003 often have better information than sleek modern sites. That's because they were built to share information, not to capture search traffic.

The Irony of This Article

Yes, I'm aware that I'm complaining about AI content on the internet while potentially using AI to help write this. We're all hypocrites here. The difference (I hope) is that there's an actual human with actual opinions behind this who actually thinks the internet has gone downhill.

The problem isn't AI as a tool. The problem is AI as a replacement for thought. Using AI to help organize your ideas? Fine. Using AI to generate 1,000 articles about topics you know nothing about to game search rankings? That's how we got here.

What Happens Next?

Some predictions that might be wrong:

• Search will change: Google is already adding AI summaries to searches. Soon we might not visit websites at all, just get robot summaries of robot content.
• Verification will matter: Platforms that can prove human authorship will become valuable. "Written by a verified human" will be a selling point.
• Small web revival: As the mainstream internet becomes unusable, people will retreat to smaller, curated spaces. Newsletters, Discord servers, private communities.
• AI detectors will fail: The cat-and-mouse game between AI generators and AI detectors will continue, and generators will keep winning.
• We'll adjust: Just like we learned to ignore banner ads and email spam, we'll develop heuristics for ignoring AI garbage. The internet will be worse, but we'll cope.

Final Thoughts

The internet is getting trashed. That's not controversial at this point. But it's not completely dead. Real humans are still out there, writing real things, sharing real experiences. You just have to work harder to find them.

Maybe that's the future: an internet where finding good content is a skill, where you cultivate your own sources instead of trusting search results, where you build a personal collection of trusted voices instead of hoping the algorithm shows you something good.

Or maybe we'll all just ask ChatGPT directly and skip the websites entirely. Either way, RIP Google results 2005-2022, you were great while you lasted.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to add 47 keywords to this article so it actually ranks.

(Just kidding. Mostly.)