Dead Internet Theory: Nostalgia and the Problem of Other Minds 

The internet has conditioned people to see other human beings as NPCs.

You appear to have a misunderstanding of what the theory is about, although some people will tell you people are bots, its more than just this far fetched idea. The main ideas of the dead internet theory is that the internet is going through an extremely hard centralization, one that has made most of internet traffic go through the top 100 sites (facebook, twitter, RU-vid, etc.) This centralization ends up in a homogenized internet devoid of non-corporate touch. Centralization aside, another main point of the theory is the death and rotting of the internet, most sites are down, most media got lost, most links lead nowhere. A popular example of this is the often mentioned supreme court archive, in which about 60-70% of links are outright dead Tldr: the NPC meme is but a tiny fraction of the dead internet theory

liked this video a lot. Had an existential crisis but your logically sound justification quickly made me realise how irrational the notion was to begin with

I miss the old internet :(

This channel is the perfect combination of philosophy and memes. I love this type of content lol.

Having solipsistic episodes as a kid sounds terrifying

The private language argument is so strong surprisingly wow

I've got Philosophy A-Level mocks in a few days and your explanation of Wittgenstein's private language argument and how it tackles solipsism is the best explanation I've encountered. Brilliant video as always!

I thought about this when I was younger, and quickly came to the conclusion that the reason I can’t prove that others have no true conscious like myself, is because I’m developed to only experience life through my pinhole perception. Everyone else can’t experience my conscious the same way because they too are limited like I. I believe this is a good rationale to why this is, and basically explains why, given the unlikely probability that I happen to be the only person to exhibit conscious with identical behaviors as all around me. It’s just more likely that I can’t merely because of my biological limitations keeping me from experiencing others perceptions.

That's not what people have in mind when they meme about npc. Npc is an exaggeration of the conformist attitude typical in the modern mass man. At its core, it really refers to those who are 'conditioned' by society's various tendencies without being able to 'rise above'. It appeared in many different forms throughout the years. Before npc, it was the criticism that people lacked the capacity to 'think critically'. In ancient time, it was embodied by gnosticism. Now it is an (outdated) archetype similar to the -oomers. It really isn't about the mind, its ontology, or language whatsoever, but rather a jeer characterized by the frustration of a powerless man. The npc is a signifier for the mass, the diminutive Other of the individual. In the vein of Ellul's observation, the mass society is engineered to rid individuals of their ability to express (or even to form) their inner thought. Hence at the outset, it can appear that the outward social self displayed by people are so predictable as if they are 'coded', a bunch of 'programmes'. This lends the dead internet theory its core language. What if no one actually uses the internet? What if everyone on a certain imageboard is a bot? As is often the case, the connection should not be interpreted literally: a meme functions like a joke, you're suppose to read from it a sentiment, rather than an assertion. It's not that "we share a common word for a certain thing-in-itself, thereby proving the existence of others", but rather "I can't find a word for this thing I'm experiencing, hence it doesn't exist in the social scale; I'm all alone in this desert". If there's anything language related from this meme, it is the alienation of our individuality through language. Hence, the point about this dead internet theory is how banal the internet has become, and subsequently our inability to genuinely communicate, rather than that 'communication is impossible because the other does not exist'. It is a 'joke' encapsulating the hellscape of technological society. And no, it's definitely not going away anytime soon.

I hate to fanboy bro but your videos are well thought out and super insightful. I just subscribed. Keep sharing your perspective.

As for the Nostalgia, there is a reason its gone. People left them for the stuff we have now. Back in the day there were discussion sites, chat rooms, blogs, and personal websites. Today people can use FB groups, Discord, and youtube for the first three, while free website hosting exists for the last. I would point out that youtube does far more than what could be done back in the day.

Oh yeah some people are definitely NPCs It feels like I'm the only one trying to avoid pushing people in subway.

Philosophy just seems like digging a never ending hole

3:28 that's exactly what I used to think about some people that have different opinions and tastes. I was like, "what conscious being would like/do/say that"? I think it comes from not being capable of understanding that someone else can have a totally different life experience than you had. These things evolve from an environment that you were all your life in, and it's pretty understandable that everyone had a different childhood, different job, different people around them, and even their own Internet bubble.

DUNCAN: The internet might be dead, here's the evidence * A theory that other peoples' sensory states may or may not exist *

The chaos this put into my brain combined with the knowledge that there is a good portion of the population that doesn’t have an inner monologue.

ok damn i didn’t expect to jam out so hard at the end??? also i just want to mention that i think your videos are high quality and very entertaining. you have such a genuineness to you that i love. it’s incredibly hard for people to make me laugh on youtube but you’re good at it so congrats!!! surprised you don’t have more subs

My general thoughts and experiences: I find it really interesting when people talk about “the old internet.” Since I’m really young I either wasn’t alive back then or I was like a toddler (I was born in late 2009 btw) And this whole discussion is really fun even tho I don’t know much about the old internet. The NPC topic kinda reminds me of the Truman show, in the way that there’s either one or not that many people that are actually conscious and the rest are fake, or in the case of the Truman show (that i mentioned before) that people are just actors and nothing is real. That and theories like that have really been something always present in my mind, even tho I know it’s incredibly unlikely. When I was younger I had this thing that I thought that when I slept “the real me” was alive and my dreams were my actual life and when I was awake “the real me” was dreaming and my life was their dreams. Also this weird thing that I thought my mom sometimes turned into a robot or an alternate version of her from “my real life” (aka when I slept and “the real me” was awake) as that my mom would try to kill me (as a robot or as an evil version of her) so that “the real me” wouldn’t need to sleep. I then for weeks demanded that I was with my mom 24/7 because I wanted to catch the moment when she turned “evil” (she never did, I was just insane) I also had this thing in that phase that everyone outside of me and my mom (well only her sometimes) were fake duplicates from “the real world”. I was a weird 10 year old.

Why is grinning Wittgenstein so terrifying?!

Excellent. Well done.

When I was a kid before the internet I had thoughts of me being the only real person and everyone else was a "npc" who was put around me for some reason or another. Or I thought that if my favorite color was blue and I saw the color blue, someone else might see green but be told that it was blue. Like the colors look different to everyone but we still have the same names for that specific color. Goodnight.

Dun ur popping up homie. Amazing yo

Interesting, you may have unknowingly picked up on another point. Do those we dream about ever pick up on our emotional state? I don’t think I’ve ever had a dream where others in the dream have picked up on my mood and asked if I’m okay. I’ve been sad, angry, happy etc in dreams but I don’t think the other people in the dream are ever aware of this. I did come across an interesting thread a while back when someone asked what responses do you get when you tell those in a dream it is just that, a dream. Majority of users said they either look confused or say “it’s not a dream for us”. Something else about solipsism, if I play chess and lose, where would be the logic in creating intelligence that’s greater than my own? And if I could, subconsciously at least, beat this person, why don’t I? If I can’t tune into this subconscious state and use it to my advantage then who’s denying me access to it? Of course we could say to make it as real as possible we have purposely done this, which brings us back to square one, who is the real me. This goes deeper though, a link between spirituality and astrophysics is that time doesn’t exist. Even Einstein said it was an illusion. The common belief is everything is happening now and there can be no past or future. The easiest way to explain this is looking at the night sky, we’re seeing the birth of the universe till the present all in one moment. Spiritualists believe consciousness can be shifted to any part of time, and the body will follow. This could explain time hopping, where many have said they temporarily went to a different part of history, only to be thrown back to their timeline a few mins later. If true, then our consciousness is driving all of it, and even our physical self is but a small part of it. So we’re left with the question - if consciousness is therefore true, how vast is it? And if it does spread across the entire cosmos, then yes, it’s just me.

A concept similar to Wittgenstein, is Lacans Big Other, which, while puportrating some of the same arguments as Wittgenstein, also says many things in our languages are a symbolic texture of human subjectivity

that comment where the guy says most people are npcs could be partially truth not like most are programmed to act certain way, but many people will just do, think and feel whatever the trend tells them, i don't think this needs further explanation cause just seeing how many people act is a good proof

I recommend people of all kinds to develop their own websites/forums, our overreliance on Twitter/Reddit is turning the Internet into a Intranet.

Wow, I had never heard Wittgenstein’s argument. Really interesting

Gracias por el video, just subbed

Reddit is full of these bots and propaganda

Wittgenstein was wrong, he was under the assumption that the outside world actually exists, and since there is no way to confirm that, everything could just be happening inside our brains, including "everyone else", so because everything is in our brain, that means that everything we know, is also known by "everyone else" even emotions

We could just be forgetting how many kids are on the internet posting things and obsessing over things that don't concern us.

Duncan, I appreciate you talking about solipsism and your experience as a kid, because the same thing happened to me when I was 15 years old. However, in my teenage experience, it wasn't about robot NPCs. It was more about "How do I know I'm not the only lonely mind in an illusory universe to create myself to not feel alone?" It will be difficult to explain (even more with my poor English using translators), but it came about when I realized that, just by perceiving what I perceive, I have the sensation of being the center of the cosmos... their "protagonist". Beyond the cosmic horror I drowned in at the time (which resulted in a complete loss of Christian faith, among other things), my solipsistic experience would posit the probability that the "NPCs" could indeed "understand" the emotion I feel, since they, in short, would be a projection of myself. Does this approach seem easily solvable to you or does it really generate that the solipsistic question becomes more fucked up? PD: Today a I'am an "atheist pantheist". I "solved" the dilemma that the cosmos itself lives each of our lives, perhaps, in order to experience itself. It was, in fact, the second postulate I made at the age of 15 to solve the "solipsistic problem". Although that went very against the Christian dogma that I professed, besides that I/we would "live" all possible terrible experiences in other lives. That was a very terrible time for me. And yes, solipsism is pathological.

This is far more possible than most people think.

My problem with the NPC meme is that it was mostly created and pushed forth by the people the meme is best applied to.

The fact that YOU are pondering this and you are not me proves that you have your own experience of consciousness. Not to say that there isn't just one singular consciousness experienced in different forms by different physical expressions of that consciousness, like a chandelier breaks a single source of light into many different directions but when you remove the chandelier, it's still just a single source of light.

Hello! I would love to see you make a video about human instrumentality from evangelion, it's a very interesting topic :)

Solipsism seems to be an abstraction that is frequent enough as an issue it must be a hard puzzel for many people to resolve for themselves in a satisfactory way. Without overcomming this step for example how can one be empathetic to anyone over anything?

I didn't quite get why a private language is nessesarily meaningless. If a experience pain and define "x" by refering to my experience of pain, and don't forget how i defined "x", i cant confidentaly say that "x" is the correct word for "pain".

Chatbots are all over the place, but the internet is not overrun by complex AI. That's just a fairy tale.

Emergence theory. They made a dialogue tree of all possible combinations of words in the universe. Look into emergence theory. Thx you for your time and ily

Just as a counter to the comments, I've seen people at face value claim the majority of the internet is bots and not real people, so I do appreciate this video in general.

these are these thoughts that drive me insane

First time I heard of the Private Language , very interesting. You got yourself a follower not NPC 0051A.

W channel keep it up

Omg I thought this as a kid too. Crazy somebody else does too.

plot twist: the only real people are the ones who thought of this dilemma without someone else bringing it up.

If you take this NPC thing to an extreme, I too could be a NPC, how could I ever know, if the programmer were clever? Just because Descartes thinks doesn't mean he existed, i.e. there was someone there inside his head. You can go in circles with this line, what is the point? One might as well live as if it is all real, in which case it IS real for all practical purposes. What more is required? Looks like our boy Wittgenstein proved that if I exist then others do too. Since, like Descartes, I prefer to think of myself as existing, its nice to know that we all do.

That conclusion seems wrong. Just because the npc responds to sadness with a hug or something, doesn’t mean that it experiences sadness or empathy. It can just be programmed to respond that way, analogous to that Chinese box thought experiment. I really don’t understand that last logical jump.

good content

Who's to say NPCs in video games don't have consciousness 👀 You could make the argument that from a phenomenological perspective, most people are NPCs

Where did you get that 4chan post at the start of the video? I'd like to read it in full.

Wittgenstein is so good.

How do you cope with the irrationality so prevalant in our modern society from politics to just interacting often with reactionary and irrational people online?

other people are each individual fractals of complexity which an observer will never be able to fully understand. yourself, though, youre simple and you already know everything about you. I guess its more comfortable to try and extend yourself into others rather than learning about them and them learning about you

Epistemological solipsism is rough, buddy. It's not believing that you're the only thing that exist, but that you may not know if whether you're the only thing that exists or not.

It Will Never Be Put To Rest 8)

I have a big issue with your understanding of philosophical zombies. I don't believe that feeling emotions is impossible for a being without a consciousness, I think it's all advanced chemical reactions to the stimulus around us past and present that shape who we are and our reactions to current stimuli, with our genetics providing a baseline for how these reactions effect the outcomes. Basically, I view our brains and consciousness separately. Even emotions are created from our meat computer, and the ONLY thing the "soul" does is to experience these, if there is one at all. That is all I can be sure of, is that I exist in the form of my soul as I experience only myself, I can lose chunks of my brain while still being me. Are these my thoughts? Is it actually my soul typing this out, or is it all just my meat computer? When you cut the brain hemispheres off from each other, the outward projection of a person isn't lost. This alone is crucial to understanding what we could possibly be, it shows very clearly our brains can function as they were without a consciousness. In everyday life this doesn't matter, obviously. I either accept everything I perceive as a given, or I vegetate I guess. It's purely a thought experiment to me, but I do find it annoying when people assume their position is right, that personality zombies are impossible for whatever reason or even that we are all personality zombies. It assumes you know the very nature of our souls, and assuming we have none is impossible as I am me yet not my brain. You cannot take for granted anything, as we cannot even know for sure anything outside of some form of being. There is no answer and there probably never will. Idk how understandable any of that was. I have a very difficult time explaining it in words. Overall, you cannot be sure of anything, and I find it annoying when people think they're right when they're based on assumptions.

you have missed the fundamental point of this theory. The theory is not that the internet is an AI run thing, but that Google has killed it. This isn't really that hard to understand, how did you miss that part?

True. To the dot. I strongly agree on the last chapter

Sounded like you are talking about the simulation theory.

Not sure if the explanation at the end makes sense since fake people in dreams can talk about their experiences

I love Wittgenstein. That man is a freaking (and freaky) genius. Too intelligent for this world, sure, but what a mind altering giant.

could be the case that there is an illusion of correctness or incorrectness just because we think our mental states are communicated in a public language 8:38 since the npc have some sort of "appearing to have qualia " tutorial although this is a very long way to decline the argument and could be criticized by the question "why Only I have qualia" and why would they bother with appearing to have it just for me

Twitter and YT are botted like crazy. Usually to even stick out I will talk about random things, but do it over and over. 1998 ford explorer

Thank you for bringing sopilisim to light because I thought was basically god for 2 years of my childhood

For the algorithm

Nice HM music though.

Solipsism is cured by realizing that you might just be an observer, not making choices, and that consciousness may be a byproduct of functioning brains.

the Terminators _Are_ taking Over

👍🏿

The private language argument falls apart as soon as you assume that a percentage of the population are not NPCs, and a percentage are

what if we're all thinking too much, instead shouldn't we just be. i guess society takes us away from our purest form of being and instead it makes us think & feel so disconnected, plus the media, mass psychosis and narcissists make us feel like we need something, like we're missing something to a point of suicide in some. i believe we should try to expierince & observe more often, then again thinking is natural, but too much causes a disconnect from real life. i don't think we can logically understand existence, but i do believe we can all feel the truth of life. any higher being would communicate through feelings. i feel the love 💜

The picture at 0:06 is deeply disturbing. I was about to sleep but let me read some bible verses before I do.

Using Wittgenstein's private language argument to counter solipsism is interesting, but I don't think that it entirely works because it assumes that only if one is able to use language can one be conscious. But what about pre-linguistic children? Surely, it's reasonable to conclude that they must have _some_ kind of mental life. Even if their mental lives are rudimentary and shallow, and even if those mental lives become greatly enriched once the children learn to use language, that's very different from saying that language use creates a mental life _de novo._ And if learning to use language does somehow bestow consciousness upon someone, how would it do so? If you have no ability to grasp thought prior to learning language, even if only very inchoately, how would learning language give you this ability? How would learning to use language enable you to experience qualia? The latter suggestion is even more implausible.

Do you think bots are a hoax?

But what about imitation?

Of course, if you are the only conscious being, then it stands to reason that you are not human, because you are the exception, not everyone else.

I was thinking Dead Internet Theory took a kernel of truth -- that bots are rampant and can occasionally skew internet discourse --- and runs with it to the point where You (yes you) are the main character of the internet. If you suspect someone's a bot, call them horrible names. If they get mad and respond they're probably real.

I assume most youtubers were people. As for comments, tweets, and other forms of engagement, a lot of that could be bots. Why should that matter to those non-bots mixed in with the bots?

What I'd people are made to do the same thing over and over again, making the same things, forming the same relationships? Are we, too, programmed, or are we free to roam? If this is true, did history happen or not? Does future exist? Does time exist?

25 years ago, after ingesting a lot of magic mushrooms, I made one with the universe. Then I realized I was alone, a unique being roaming endlessly in the void. And everyone else, every person I had ever met was just a product of my imagination. I hate solipsism now :)

I am straight up an NPC no doubt

This is neither wittgenstein's PLA, nor is it valid. the point is not that the meaningfulness of language implies the existence of other minds (it doesn't), but that the question of whether other people experience pain doesn't make sense, as pain doesn't refer to an inner sensation that can in principle be had by me or you.

i'm still not convinced that private langusge cannot exist. a person can speak with himself. he can continously refer same thing with same word if he has good memory. that person won't b just refering to memory of sensation he associated with the word but also the same sensation he get next time bcoz a person just doesn't recognize word but also he has memorized ostensive characteristic of that sensation.

Ah, Solipsism, Yes, I, and I ALONE created every movie, every song, every piece of artwork, every beautiful piece of music, etc.... it's ALL ME!

Aren't there thousands of bots posting on social media at any given moment?

I'm cool with present days internet, of course not as cool as before but very funny nonetheless.

Not long now, I think.

Sounds like what an ai would say

Im not super convinved by wittgenstein’s private language counter to solipsism. How are you so sure that zombies don’t have access to the solipsists feelings? If we imagine that the whole external world is just in the solipsist’s imagination, then the solipsist could just imagine how people would react if they had access to their internal language. And about how a private language would be meaningless because the meanings of feelings words would be unconnected from what they they signify, thats exactly how language normally operates. The meanings of words always change over time, wether in a public natural language or in a private language, solipsist or not. Think about the word “sad”, which used to mean steadfast and serious, and before that meant sated and weary.

If a delusional man gets stuck on a dessert Island but he has all the skills to survive and no one is around to tell him that he is delusional, Is he still delusional?

think of this explanation as CNN like and you're GOLDEN.

Im in the dead internet. I cant communicate with other people

I think this is not the case with NPC meme. I think there is more to it, when you know some Jungian concepts like collective unconcious and anima/animus possession. Just sayin'

Vichenstein could still be incorrect. I never heard of him till now or never read his works but I believe he most likely believes that we have free will. (personally i lean towards deterministic) He implys that we are choosing what words we speak. Because if everything was deterministic and you were just bound to say this and they were to say that, then you still wouldn’t be able to prove that other conscious beings exist. Because from a determistic standpoint, you can’t really choose what you what you want to want. Sure you do what you want to do, but do you choose what you want to want ? You can do what you will but not will what you will. So in the lense of determinism (and materialism i suppose maybe) consciousness would be whatever is observing what’s naturally unfolding. Which means, when you’re communicating with people you yourself the consciousness wouldn’t be communicating but you are the one experiencing the conversation. Which means you wouldn’t really be able to unprove solipsism in a deterministic view I believe. How would you? I don’t know though, because I don’t fully stick to one side of the fence of things anyways that’s how these subjects are haha. Hopefully my wording and thought process was comprehensible lol

I still don't know, if Wittgenstein's Private Language theory is correct. Because what, if the language is subconscious and when others speak them it only reflects my subconscious language, for example, imagine you would create a language subconsciously, in a dream imaginary people could speak this language.

It’s not Dead but it is “Faked” Engagement in most cases because of Bots and algorithms.

No, we can't put that idea to rest at all. The speaker doesn't have to understand what he is saying to say it. Have none of you ever heard of language learning models? And they would be only one instance of this

Y couldn’t ppl just be pretending to understand and have felt the same feelings we’re speaking abt??