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You're a bot, and I am too: Internet conspiracy theory is 49.6% true

There’s something ‘off’ about the internet lately, and an old internet conspiracy theory might be able to explain it better than I ever could.

Professional gamers who dedicate eight hours or more a day to games they don’t enjoy because they know it garners views, and the knitting enthusiast who gave up on their blog for Only Fans because the results of a Brazilian butt lift reaped far more engagement than explaining their love for Bavarian twisted stitches. We’re all positioned as the main character of the movie now, influencers and entrepreneurs amassing followers and likes as if the web’s MMO rules have been swapped for those of a real-time strategy framework—where the goal of the game is to build your cult of personality and harvest self-affirmation points on your quest to gaining entry to the YouTube Partner program. Stop parading for likes on social media, take down your carefully crafted karma farm Reddit posts, quit playing Call of Duty: Warzone on Twitch, enjoy the games you actually love, and bring the internet back to life — the real one.

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