The end of the human internet
Hey everyone, this is Nick Statt, senior producer on Decoder. We’re taking a brief publishing break while Nilay is out on vacation. We’ll resume regular programming next week, and we’ve got some great episodes in the works.
In the meantime, we wanted to share an episode from the excellent podcast The Gray Area, with host Sean Illing. In this one, Sean sat down with The Atlantic journalist Charlie Warzel to talk specifically about the state of the internet in 2026 — and what it means that it feels increasingly overrun by non-human actors.
Links:
The Gray Area with Sean Illing | Apple Podcasts
Galaxy Brain | The Atlantic
The internet is all bots now | The Gray Area (YouTube)
How much of the internet is fake? Turns out, a lot of it, actually| New York Magazine
How bots took over our lives | The New Yorker
The ‘dead internet theory’ is real — and it’s killing the web | Fast Company
The fanfare around the band Geese actually was a psyop | Wired
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
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The Gray Area: The End of the Human Internet
Today, we're bringing you an episode of "The Gray Area," another great show from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
In this episode, host Sean Illing talks with Atlantic writer Charlie Warzel about the increasingly weird experience of being online. They discuss AI-generated content, bots, algorithms, the “dead internet theory,” and why so much of the web now feels artificial, manipulated, or unreal. They also explore psyops, conspiracy culture, social media, and the deeper question lurking beneath the AI boom: What are human beings actually for?
Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling)
Guest: Charlie Warzel (@cwarzel)
Come see Kara live in DC. She is sitting down with Former Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo on July 16 at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center, and you can be in the room. Register now.
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Is Social Media A Scapegoat For Bigger Problems? — With Charlie Warzel at Unfinished Live
Charlie Warzel writes the Galaxy Brain newsletter on Substack, a publication he started after a career at The New York Times and BuzzFeed. Warzel joins Big Technology Podcast in a live recording at Unfinished Live to discuss what a nuanced conversation about social media's harms should look like. Stay tuned for the second half where we discuss Warzel's views on post-Covid workplace culture, the subject Out of Office, a forthcoming book for which he is a co-author.
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