429: The Dead Internet Theory: Are We Building Machines That Only Talk to Other Machines?

I spotted a LinkedIn post the other day—obviously AI-generated—with dozens of enthusiastic comments underneath. Every single one also written by AI. Bots responding to bots, a whole conversation with zero humans involved. It was both hilarious and deeply sad. This got me thinking about the dead internet theory and our role as founders in either contributing to it or pushing back against it. Today I'm exploring how we can build AI tools that augment human connection rather than replace it entirely—using AI as the means, not the end. This episode of The Bootstraped Founder is sponsored by Paddle.com The blog post: The podcast episode: Check out Podscan, the Podcast database that transcribes every podcast episode out there minutes after it gets released: Send me a voicemail on Podline: You'll find my weekly article on my blog: Podcast: Newsletter: My book Zero to Sold: My book The Embedded Entrepreneur: My course Find Your Following: Here are a few tools I use. Using my affiliate links will support my work at no additional cost to you. - Notion (which I use to organize, write, coordinate, and archive my podcast + newsletter): - Riverside.fm (that's what I recorded this episode with): - TweetHunter (for speedy scheduling and writing Tweets): - HypeFury (for massive Twitter analytics and scheduling): - AudioPen (for taking voice notes and getting amazing summaries): - Descript (for word-based video editing, subtitles, and clips): - ConvertKit (for email lists, newsletters, even finding sponsors):

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429: The Dead Internet Theory: Are We Building Machines That Only Talk to Other Machines? is an episode from The Bootstrapped Founder by Arvid Kahl.

This episode is 12:37 long.

This episode was published on Dec 26, 2025.

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