The history of the Internet is truly fascinating. It has a lot in common with a toxic relationship. It began as a project to share knowledge, turned into an all-consuming passion, and grew until it lost sight of its original purpose. And yet it’s still there, as captivating as ever, with the lingering temptation to relive those feelings, even though you know it will never be the same again.
But to understand why this happens, we need to take a closer look at the four stages that could lead such a powerful and controversial love story to a painful breakup.
Officially born back in October 1969, a year full of new developments, the first precursor to the Internet was called ARPANET, after ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency), an agency of the United States Department of Defense. Its initial goal was to allow universities and research centers to share computing resources, processing power, and data remotely. And no, contrary to what is often said, ARPANET was not born as a military network designed to survive a nuclear war.
From the first message in ARPANET’s history, that shy little “LO”, to falling madly in love, it didn’t take long, just thirty and a half years.
It was May 4, 2000, when millions of people received an email with a subject line that left no room for interpretation: “ILOVEYOU”.
A sudden declaration of love, romantic, irresistible. Too bad that behind those words there was no secret admirer, but one of the most famous and destructive computer worms in history. All it took was running the attachment, apparently a love letter, to infect the computer and send the same message to everyone in your address book.
In short, the Internet had finally learned to say “I love you”. And it had already found a way to make us regret believing it.
From here on, we all more or less know how it evolved, from the first casual hookups to no longer understanding whether it was true love or not with the birth of social networks, remaining in a constant state of contradiction. It enabled globalization, constant and invasive communication, the birth of terms like “FOMO”, because in an overly connected world, the real challenge is not feeling obligated to be part of it at all costs.
1. The social retreat - falling out of love
All this initial passion, however, seems to be cracking with the new generations, the much-talked-about Gen Z, in a gradual but apparently unstoppable process.
That incredibly strong initial passion seems to be turning into real resentment, into a desire for self-determination, into the need to feel like yourself without necessarily having to prove or show anything to anyone just to keep up with society. And so part of Gen Z has started posting less, sharing fewer photos of their daily lives, while social media has filled up with dances, aura battles, and increasingly staged content, in a desperate search for authenticity, even though we no longer really know what authenticity means.
This transformation of the relationship leads to the first crisis, the initial confrontation, the moment you ask yourself, “Okay, but what are we?”, and therefore to starting that conversation you’ve always wanted to avoid, but that deep down you knew was only a matter of time.
2. The trust crisis — the secret lover
This retreat coincides with the arrival of something destined to make things worse, like discovering a secret lover. Just as we were starting to pull away, the Internet found someone new. After all, if what we had was never really serious, what was stopping it?
Then AI explodes. Deepfakes become more and more convincing, and people start questioning everything and everyone. Every text, every image, every video could have been created by the secret lover.
And here we are at the second phase of the decline, the trust crisis, where you no longer know what you really want from the relationship, whether to keep trying or end it and, if so, how.
Whether continuing to watch short videos for six hours a day makes sense or whether it’s time to stop, whether what you’re watching is real or made up, whether there’s actually a person behind that photograph, whether the problem is the Internet or the relationship we’ve built with her.
So by the end of the first two phases, we don’t just have the loss of its original nature, but also doubt, and once doubt starts creeping into your mind, it never really goes away.
3. The security crisis — from love to hate
In the middle of this existential crisis, we arrive at the present day and the most dangerous phase of the relationship, love turning into hate.
AI starts being used to attack all kinds of IT infrastructure, to identify and exploit vulnerabilities in software and applications, including those developed with widely used technologies such as PHP and Node.js. Every website can become a target, every bank has to deal with increasingly convincing and automated fraud attempts. Doubt is no longer just in the minds of the lovers, but also involves their friends, who start pushing them to finally call it quits.
This phase, however, is hard to joke about. If this imbalance between attackers and defenders were to grow, the consequences could be severe. Attackers can use AI to launch attacks; defenders can use it too, but they also have to keep services secure and running at all times. The damage to hospitals, banks and critical infrastructure could be unimaginable: financial losses, disruptions to essential services, even shortages of supplies and medicines. Passion has turned into hate, and hate into an extremely dangerous anger.
But what will happen after this angry phase?
4. An internet without humans — acceptance, or the last relapse
As in every toxic relationship, two possibilities will open up, one truly awful and one of acceptance. In the first, I don’t even dare imagine how far someone could go for love. Certainly, the desire to relive certain feelings, the loneliness created by the habit of always being interconnected, could continue for years, with various attempts, breaking up and getting back together, which would risk leading nowhere.
The truth is that perhaps the only solution to a situation like this is acceptance, the moment you realize it’s over and you have to accept it, the moment you see that person again while you’re out and about and all the wild love you once felt comes rushing back, and you risk falling for them again, but you find the strength to resist, because it’s the right thing to do.
This is the final phase, the one in which the Internet could be so compromised that no one can be sure whether they’re talking to a person or an AI, where the only way to remain reliably interconnected might be to create dedicated systems, or simply accept that, no matter how much love there was, it couldn’t work, and therefore rediscover nature, relationships, critical thinking, reflection, and above all, boredom.
This is the story of this love, the story of how sometimes true love lies precisely in letting go for the good of both, and the story of what probably all of us are and will be called upon to accept, while constantly reliving deep inside ourselves the desire to feel that inner fire once again.