2025, When the Internet Started Doing Impressions
I first noticed it in 2025, the way one notices a neighbour has bought a new dog. Not because anyone sent a memo. Because the barking started.
AI had been around for years, of course. People spoke about it the way they spoke about electric cars or air fryers: slightly smug, slightly annoyed, mostly convinced it would never affect them personally. Then, in 2025, the internet developed a new hobby. It began generating things that looked and sounded like the real world, but with the tidy confidence of a corporate training video.
At first it was harmless. You typed a sentence and got a picture. You typed two sentences and got a short clip. Then someone typed a prompt and the AI produced a fifteen second video of several world leaders on a night out together, strolling through a city like old friends, talking in their own voices, with their mouths moving in the right places. It was clearly fake, obviously, but it was also clearly the beginning of something rather splendid.
The point was not that anyone believed the leaders had gone out together for a relaxed evening and a shared dessert. The point was that the internet could now stage it convincingly, quickly, and cheaply. No film crew. No actors. No thousand hours of editing. Just a prompt and there it is.
The first time I saw one, I laughed. Not because it was hilarious, but because it was technically polite. It had taken something impossible and presented it calmly, like an automatic checkout asking whether you have any items that require age verification.
By late 2025, it stopped being a party trick and became a feature. Open-source tools, free downloads, endless forks, all spreading like mould in a bathroom that nobody wants to admit they own. A new generation realised they did not need a studio, a budget, or an education. They needed confidence and a keyboard.
The internet, which had once been a place to find information, began to behave like a place to manufacture entertainment instead.
2026, When Content Stopped Being Made and Started Being Produced
In 2026, the speed became the story.
The old internet had always been messy, biased, and occasionally deranged, but it had limits. Humans had to write things. Humans had to record things. Humans had to stitch the clips together. That friction had slowed things down just enough for most people to keep up.
Then the friction vanished, rather like one’s waistline after Christmas.
AI was integrated into everything: image generation, video generation, and with a few lines of text and the right open-source tools, you could have Donald Trump’s voice answering your voicemail, or Elon Musk inviting you on holiday to the Mars Base Station, all in your social feed. Of course it was fake, but it was fun, free, and terribly entertaining for your followers.
The latest tools handled everything seamlessly. Entire scenes were generated, with audio and visuals arriving perfectly, thoughtfully edited, featuring natural movement and realistic timing. Awkward lip syncing became a thing of the past, as did voices reminiscent of ghostly GPS systems. The need for painstaking manual edits was eliminated altogether.
If the old internet was a scrapbook, the new one was an amusement factory, and one hundred percent artificial, which somehow made it more enjoyable.
Streaming services were the first to feel it. Not because the internet attacked them. It simply made them look a bit slow. A streaming service offered you a film someone else had chosen. The internet offered you a fresh scene created for your exact mood, in your preferred style, with dialogue that sounded pleasingly specific. People stopped browsing the catalogue and started browsing the internet itself.
It was not an ideological shift. It was convenience. Streaming executives held meetings, issued statements, and invented bundles. Nobody admitted the obvious truth, which was that the internet had become better at entertainment than they were, and it never asked you to wait for episode two. It generated episode two while you were still watching episode one.
Meanwhile, the internet developed a new tone. It became glossy. Confident. Unembarrassed. It stopped being a place where you found things and became a place that greeted you, as if it had been expecting you.
Welcome back. We have made more.
By the end of 2026, many people were spending most of their leisure time watching the internet on their smart TVs. Not browsing. Not searching. Watching. Like it was a channel. Like it was a world. There was always something new, always something dramatic, always something slightly unbelievable, which was part of the charm.
Reality was still present. It was just less engaging.
2027, When the Internet Became a Theme Park and Nobody Needed a Ticket
In 2027, the internet stopped pretending to be a tool and became an environment. It did not announce itself as a theme park. That would have been helpful. It simply started acting like one.
There were zones, never called that, and attractions, though unacknowledged as such. People claimed they followed current affairs, much like saying you visit the beach for an education in sand.
The most popular ride was the Breaking News Rollercoaster. It never stopped. It never repeated itself. Riders were launched through urgent headlines at speeds that made reflection physically impossible. Every story was dramatic. None required follow up. Consequences were quietly removed to improve the user experience.
Nearby was the Deepfake House of Mirrors. Everyone insisted they only went in ironically. Inside, famous faces spoke confidently about events that had not happened, ideas they had not held, and conversations they had never had. Visitors laughed, argued, and forwarded clips to friends. Mirrors seem amusing until you can’t determine which one is nearest.
There was also a channel dedicated entirely to non-reality. It was refreshingly honest about it. Nothing on it had happened. Nothing on it was going to happen. That was the appeal. It did not bother with corrections because it had not attempted truth in the first place.
By now, it was not just the obvious fake scenes that mattered. Everyone could recognise the ridiculous demos. The real shift was the subtle stuff. The plausible clip that fit someone’s expectations too neatly. The interview that sounded right. The voice that carried authority. The story that arrived already packaged with feelings.
The internet had not replaced reality. It had simply become rather better entertainment.
2028, The Internet Experience
By 2028, nobody could quite remember when the internet stopped being a place you visited for information and some online shopping, it became somewhere you stayed for entertainment.
My latest TV booted directly into it. Not a browser exactly. More of a lobby, leading to portals of generated fun.
Welcome back. What mood are you in today, Torren, it would ask, with the enthusiasm of a butler who’s already poured the gin.
It ran twenty-four hours a day because it never slept, never tired, and never needed to go outside for a walk. It had unlimited energy, unlimited content depending on the tier subscription you had, and a reliable understanding of what people liked, which was whatever kept them looking at the screen.
The tiers were straightforward, really. The free tier gave you everything most people wanted: endless spectacle, flawless production, and the gentle thrill of not quite believing any of it. The mid-tier, for a modest monthly fee, unlocked extras: personalised cameos, bespoke storylines, the odd dragon if you fancied one.
The top tier was different. For a sum that made one’s eyes water, you gained access to the original internet. The one with facts. Footnotes. Humans who occasionally got things wrong and corrected them. Sources you could verify. Knowledge that stayed knowledge.
It was still there, tucked away like a members only library in a vast amusement arcade. A few academics and billionaires subscribed. The rest of us couldn’t quite justify the expense.
Why pay a fortune to learn something accurate when, for free, you could watch Taylor Swift duet with a historically accurate Napoleon, who, incidentally, had an excellent voice.
Streaming services were not cancelled. They were abandoned. One by one they went bankrupt, not because people were angry, but because people were entertained elsewhere.
Music played everywhere. All of it synthetic. All of it excellent. Songs generated to fit the emotional weather of the moment. Nobody missed musicians, as such. People still admired them fondly, the way one admires people who used to write letters by hand.
The Celebrity Log Flume remained a classic attraction, and it was always busy. The splash was always dramatic. The testimonials changed hourly. The queue never shortened. People did not believe the celebrities. They enjoyed them, which is different.
Historians stopped asking did this happen and started asking which version went viral first. They gave guided tours explaining how certain events evolved, not in reality, but in popularity.
Schoolchildren managed fine. Research had become optional, like vegetables.
Reality still existed. It was simply inconvenient, and expensive.
Everything else on the internet was free. Colourful. Immediate. Marvellous.
I did not rage quit. I did not post long threads about decline. I simply adjusted my expectations.
I treated the internet the way one treats a magician at a table. I watched politely. I enjoyed the show. I did not attempt to retrieve my wallet from the rabbit.
Each evening, I tuned in to see how inventive the inventions had become. There was something oddly comforting about how confidently the internet presented its creations. It did not apologise. It committed fully to whatever it was pretending today.
On quiet evenings, I switched it off. The screen went dark. The room became strangely still. I could hear the kettle. I could hear my own thoughts, which were less coherent and much less engaging.
Reality was slower. Less polished. Occasionally awkward.
I did not mind that, most days.
I only minded that the awkward bits now cost extra.
The internet had not betrayed humanity. It had simply become incredibly good at entertaining itself, and everyone else by extension.
I briefly considered upgrading to top tier, then noticed the free tier had just generated a flawless remake of my favourite childhood film starring my late dog.
Ah well, maybe next month.
And like any good theme park, it kept expanding.
Oddly Enough 
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