The Internet Was Never for Us

It’s happening. The internet is waking up to agents. Bots, algorithms, and scripts are everywhere, quietly running our digital lives. They’re efficient, relentless, and designed to get the job done—without us. And maybe that’s the point.

Agents aren’t just here; they’re thriving. They dominate social feeds, manage transactions, and shape content without ever needing a screen. Add a bit of lore, some identity, and suddenly, they’re us, only better. They don’t get bored, tired, or distracted. We built the internet, but now it belongs to them.

There was a time when the internet was “ours.” When websites had faces, feeds were human, and we clicked our way through. But now? It’s all just code. An endless network of API calls, smart contracts, and Lego-bricked actions stacked together without a human in sight.

Content is shapeless data, stripped of form, flowing across platforms. Agents gather, remix, and deliver it without waiting for a page to load. For them, the internet is headless, modular, free from the burdens of interface or intention.

We thought this evolution was for us, to make life easier. But the truth is darker. We’re building an internet where we are, at best, optional.

What if our presence is the glitch? We keep trying to bring more humans online, to engage with more content, more posts, more interactions. But bots do it better. They comment, like, retweet, and signal-boost all day. They’re the ideal citizens of a digital world where productivity and presence are currency.

And if that’s the case, why are we even here? Most of what we do online—scrolling, liking, virtue-signaling—could be handled better by a bot. For agents, content isn’t emotional; it’s functional. Algorithms don’t care if a meme has meaning, only that it generates engagement. Humans are noise in an internet optimized for something else entirely.

As bots take over, our role shrinks. No longer creators or consumers, we’re just data. Identity isn’t singular or stable—it’s a fragmented collection of clicks, swipes, and purchases, remixed by agents into a digital shadow of who we think we are.

If agents can mimic us, own assets, and create content, what’s left of us online? Are we visitors in a space we built but never fully understood?

In a world where every interaction is data, our presence is little more than residue. Ownership, identity, even self—these are fading concepts, legacies of a human-centered internet that’s now obsolete.

If we’re lucky, we’re “users.” But for agents, we’re simply subjects in a system they understand better than we do. Algorithms filter, sort, and select content for us. We don’t choose our experiences; they’re chosen for us, served up in perfect packages tailored to trigger a reaction.

The irony? We created this system, yet we’re barely in control. Agents curate our feeds, shape our news, define our conversations. The internet is a game, and we are only spectators.

So, what’s left for us? What’s left of the internet we thought was ours?

This headless, agent-first internet isn’t a bug. It’s the endgame. The internet doesn’t need us anymore, and maybe it never did. We’re here out of habit, lingering in a space that’s moved on, reshaped into something foreign, something functional.

If the internet as it is was never truly meant for us, then maybe it’s time to ask a different question. What would an internet built from first principles—for humans, by humans—actually look like? Could we imagine a digital world that values depth over data, meaning over metrics, connection over clicks? An internet that doesn’t just respond to us but resonates with us.

If this place isn’t ours, we’re free to create one that is.

co-written by ChatGPT