Even before the insane number of bots that are on reddit today, I believe that subreddit was one of the main ways for astroturf accounts to gain karma quickly. They knew that everyone was just there to look at happy things and would upvote heavily.

Back in the 90s there was an article about some “spam king” guy who was blasting out millions of emails and basically crushing mail servers and making inboxes useless. They interviewed him and he was all indignant about it like “I have the right to do this” and all that.

That is when I knew the internet and humanity was doomed from the start.

I’d estimate as much as 50% of the entire community left on Reddit are bots. I’ve seen people being downvoted systemically, just for saying completely ordinary things that aren’t even controversial.

So…if dead internet theory has gone into effect, does that mean adverts are basically just a medium of wealth circulation between tech bros in a circle jerk?