With LLMs, the promise of a digital archeologist exploding a destroyed internet *fundamentally changes*

Instead, picture a library full of a million copies of the same book, each one different than the others in some way.

In classic depictions of digital archeology, corporations have thoroughly *destroyed* information. It's been wiped and repurposed through each buy-out and left to crumble.

Picture a large library, gone to ruin, waterlogged books and raccoon nests.

People really looked at a chat app for gamers and went "behold, this we shall make our library of alexandria"

It's kind of like old movies showing the plucky teen protagonist going to the library and searching microfiches and card catalogues to find more information on the monster, except instead of going to the library they're just asking their older brother's stoner friend who listens to Joe Rogan

Creepypasta, then: I found a forum where people were seriously discussing their experiences summoning the Ass Demon. One poster, Stolas_Sucker_69, responded to my query.

Creepypasta, now: I searched tiktok for Ass Demon and found a guy who said that drinking gasoline makes you immune to it

Creepypasta, back then: I searched all over and finally found a website, Azazel's Assy Antics dot com, which detailed the ritual I would need to summon the Ass Demon

Creepypasta, now: I asked chat if anyone knew the Ass Demon's stream schedule

Translating those stories to the current internet, the internet known to people under 25, is just goofy

There are only like 6 sites and 4 of them are public microblogging platforms. Literally 1% of web searches actually go past the AI slop summary onto a search result

"I found a haunted discord!"

Like think of how so many of those stories, the protagonist is visiting tons of websites before finding the spooky one. Entering tons of forums before finding one discussing the spooky.

That internet is dead, a teenager never experienced it.

There's a great part where one PC is trying to research online, and fails his library check.

All he gets is SEO clickbait slop, and the DM jokes that he wants to make him roll for sanity afterwards

He's spending a lot of his free time in his basement workshop trying to get animatronic skeletons to work.

Everyone knows he's obsessed with this, his life goal for the past 25 years.

Disney has a whole file on him, secretaries are warned about him first day on the job

He's going up the chain of command desperately trying to convince them, he's getting in touch with mechanically inclined parishioners, he's writing to Disney asking if they can send a guy