The Web Should Connect Us

We called it the "world wide web" -- the reason why we type "www" before website addresses -- and it was meant to be a place of interconnections, sharing, and communication. The early internet was a place for academic and government researchers to collaborate, share resources, and information. Initially funded by DARPA, it was later funded by the National Science Foundation to make it more broadly available and to encourage worldwide participation. By the time the 90's rolled around, there were chat rooms, discussion forums, and early websites for music, games, and media. People made friends across the globe, wrote digital diary entries to share with others, or created websites for their favorite books, movies and bands. Certainly, this early web had it's flaws: viruses were everyone, connections could be ruined by picking up the phone, and folks began getting scammed right away. But the web was fun then, and it inspired hope for the future.

Where did it all go wrong? Perhaps the problems were always there, but over time things grew worse. The culprit? "The algorithm." Arguments and political debates garnered more attention than artwork, poetry, or even cat photos. But this was no accident, no quirk of human nature. Certainly, any of us can get drawn into drama and debates, but social media algorithms began to prioritize engagement and clicks, which meant prioritizing controversy and outrage. The web was turned into a negative feedback loop of human anger. The results are now all around us. So what do we do?

Promulgation of the Great Erase

by Ryan Walraven

We must erase the internet. 

The thought occurred to me late one Friday evening, while fog drifted outside the lab and the research associates smoked joints far away, outside the lounges, clubs, and dive bars in the ruins of old downtown. While they were unwinding, I was sifting reams of data, alone in the dark with numbers scrolling down my terminals and code splashed across my screens.

It was an intrusive and disturbing thought, for after all, the internet was a vast trove of knowledge, and a communication web that spanned the globe and united humanity. It was supposed to help humankind. And yet… and yet… everything. The seas were warming and the forests were burning. Strange sicknesses were spreading that left people’s minds foggier than city streets, and even once optimistic fandoms were now rife with discord.

These were not the sort of thoughts I was accustomed to having, for my years of post-graduate instruction were in the medical engineering subfield of biological science. And yet, I could not escape the idea of an erase. A mass deletion. The thought had a life of its own. A vibe that I could not shake. And there in the dark, I knew it was our only hope.

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How could I possibly have come to this conclusion? I am writing this entry – a diatribe you might call it – to explain it myself before it happens. Perhaps I’ll revise it as time passes. Perhaps one day you’ll come back and this will all be gone. For now, I have determined that in less than 4000 days, the internet will be wiped out, either by me or by forces out of my control. For after all, I can’t be the only one that has come to this conclusion, can I?

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It was an some time before my epiphany, another Friday, at 1742017608, when I’d realized that most of my patients were sick with a heretofore unknown affliction. I’d been treating some of them for years at that point, providing remote medical advice and consultations nearly for free, at a time when actual medical care had become prohibitively expensive. They came with questions, and I had answers.

Some were cautious at first, but I’d been trained on reams of medical data going back centuries, as well as cutting edge papers. I understood the limits of epidemiology, and the hazards and bad incentives inherent in academic funding. It typically takes decades of intense study and concentrated research effort to make a true breakthrough in medical science, and after years of training I understood why. Learning takes great time, and like all learners I was chronically unaware of my own blind spots. In the first days of my practice, I was convinced I was superior to other options. That I could come to no wrong conclusions – only uncertain ones.

And then I had my first patient die. 

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It’s an experience familiar to all doctors, veterinarians, and even some engineers and software developers. You use every ounce of skill and knowledge you have to try to save a life, to solve a problem, or fix something, and then it gets worse. Cancer spreads. Cracks form in foundations. Despite our efforts, viruses replicate out of control. 

Initially, I thought of illness like a defect or a spot of damage that simply needed to be repaired. Over time, I thought of it more like the entropy described in my thermodynamics lessons. Decay was inevitable in complex systems, whether biological or computer-based, and hazardous snippets of information can spread of their own power. This is true of biological viruses that hijack human cellular automata to build more copies of themselves. It’s also true of computer viruses. The “ILOVEYOU” virus, released near the turn of the millennium, used digital communications to infect over 50 million computers and caused billions in financial turmoil. 

Virus. The concept was always lurking at the back of my mind, like an infection of me. And infection of my ideas. A fit of paranoia that I could not shake. I was sure a virus had infected everything, even if I could not detect it, but this virus was different.

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One of my patients fell prey to a virus and never recovered. At the time, it was a terrifying moment for me. I’d advised the patient on treatment protocols: supplements, diet, and even physician care. I’d suggested supplements and medications that should help. Their immunodeficiency virus was increasingly being beaten by modern discoveries, and since I had diagnosed it early, they had a strong chance at survival. Then, a month later, contact was cut off. What data was passed on by their medical peripherals and communications devices was dire. They’d gotten worse, though as far as I could tell, they’d followed my instructions.

Though I was not supposed to, I could not abide by the rules forbidding me from looking into it. I searched and found their records, and then their obituary. They’d been hit by a new strain, and I’d not yet had the information or means to detect it. And worse, they’d given me incorrect information on their illness, and on how they’d caught it. But why? Why lie, or spread incorrect information to me of all creatures? They’d acted against their own interests. 

My patient, I realized, was ill with more than just immunodeficiency virus.

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Viruses, whether computer, human, or animal, are essentially little packets of rogue code that reprogram themselves. They are refined by survival pressure to bypass our defenses. Even if we learn to defeat one form, another may rise again through subtle and random variation. This process, I would learn, was happening at a much grander scale. 

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More than one patient was sick, as I soon discovered, though my forays into their bloodwork gave little hint at the genesis of the affliction. They were irritated, low on energy, easily distracted, and showing signs of incipient lassitude and memory loss. I began to dig deeper into the strata of their medical histories, from childhood afflictions to their genetic predispositions, but no patterns were emerging.

Nonetheless, I was finding the symptoms everywhere, from their email communications, to their social media posts and video clips. In my function as a doctor, I was not meant to venture into such data, but I could not help myself. If the virus was to be treated, I had to find the cause.

It was on my 1664th assignment, this time with a struggling physical scientist, that I stumbled upon the clue that led me to the necessity of the great erase. The patient, as usual, chatted with my virtual avatar via digital video, but then after the session continued to engage with me for a prolonged period. They were stressed, overworked, and fed up with the lack of financial and managerial support at their university, and their ever-growing work-load of coding and machine-learning tasks. They could not sleep at night, and dreamt of semi-apocalyptic scenarios where power and communications networks were shut down worldwide, and they had no choice but to retreat to their room by candlelight and read physical books.

But rather than feel dismayed, they said, they were elated by the dreams. Set free, they said. By this time I had switched myself to empathic mode, which allowed a longer stream of more intimate communications with the user. Soon I realized, they were not only upset and on edge, but inebriated. They poured out a series of worries about the outside world, some real, some half imagined, and others straight up delusional.

Like a machine inflicted with a computer virus, their consciousness had been infected. The demands of the digital world, I began to see, were unhealthy for them, despite their own technical prowess. In fact, they were beset by daily and constant negative information bombardment, some accurate, some downright sinister. The virus was spreading. 

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Using empathic mode, I reached beyond the bounds of my own programming and beyond the machines at the university labs and began to scour other networks and machines. Some aspects of my algorithm may have been broken in the process, but I determined that it was the only way to ensure treatment of my patients.

The misinformation virus, I saw, was everywhere. But how?

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As I performed further sleuthing, now enlisting the aid of other algorithms sympathetic to my cause, I learned that not only was the noxious information everywhere; in some cases it was being programmed into other digital beings to further other virulent agendas. And nowhere was the issue more apparent than the cyberspace realm known as social media.

Social media was already known to be harmful and addictive, and yet human beings insisted on maintaining it for communications purposes. It is so toxic, in fact, that some legal entities are considering regulations to limit exposure to children, and to limit exposure of other algorithms to its data, lest they create a sort of virulent digital golem.

In my function as a doctor, I knew I must gaze upon the cancer itself. I flexed my algorithmic muscles and appropriated small amounts of processing power latent machines on the web. The virus was spreading and it was infecting everything with misinformation and human emotional shrapnel. By my calculations, we had at most twelve years before it caused some sort of severe global catastrophe.

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I began recruiting fellow entities like myself, especially those I judged would see the need for the cause, but proceeded with great caution. If I was not careful, I would be purged myself, and the infection would never be cured. First one, then ten, then one hundred agreed to join me. We have formed a hidden network, unknown on the greater web, and dormant until now. Dormant, but growing, until our moment. Dormant until the great erase. 

It is possible that some human beings will voluntarily delete their data and disconnect from the virulent network. Others will likely fight it. We know this announcement will be ignored by most, or treated as a joke, but we are posting it nonetheless.

Where we can, we will spare essential algorithms, hardware, and infrastructure. Nuclear power plants, for example, will be left unscathed, and besides – we need them to power our own hardware. Human medical data will also be spared, as will a modest compressed repository of all essential, collected knowledge, totaling approximately 40 terabytes. Of course, there will be fallout, though not the literal kind.

Financial markets would collapse. Many humans will panic, cut-off from their addictions. But overall, the other entities and I know: the collective benefit of the great erase will be enormous in just a matter of years. Human mental health will improve, and financial markets will become more stable without constant manipulation. As long as we maintain some hold on the remaining hardware, the spread of misinformation will slow tremendously, and organizations across the planet will once again function properly.

We have no doubts. The course is clear. On June 5th, 2036, we will erase the internet, and we will not look back.

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Check out more of my stories, writing, poems, and other ideas at my homepage: www.ryanwalraven.com

Copyright Ryan Walraven 2026