Dead Internet Theory: a Y2K-era party in L.A. that revives old tech and in-person connection

Dead Internet Theory is a recurring event in Los Angeles organized by game designer Paizley Lee. It recreates the look, feel and social habits of the late 1990s and early 2000s internet era — AOL Instant Messenger-style socializing, Photo Booth selfies with an iSight webcam, and hands-on interaction with older hardware. The setting for the featured night was a clothing store on La Brea Avenue in the Fairfax District.

Instead of people staring at smartphones, guests cluster around older screens and devices. Attendees played games such as 1999's Crazy Taxi on a Sega Dreamcast and 2005's Tekken 5 on a PlayStation 2. A re-created Y2K-era web experience sat alongside a range of vintage peripherals. The room felt noisy and social, with technology used as a direct connector between people.

Paizley Lee and the iMac G3 rainbow

Lee spent months sourcing first-generation iMac G3 machines in their five core colors, driving cross-country and sleeping in her car at one point while acquiring them. She positioned the colorful, teardrop-shaped iMacs as both an aesthetic centerpiece and a practical invitation to touch and explore older interfaces.

Dan Ruth presented a leather suitcase containing an old laptop and an external Zip drive. The laptop offered a menu of banned books — items such as the Unabomber's manifesto and The Anarchist Cookbook — which participants could write to physical Zip disks and take home. Ruth had recently bought the iOmega trademark rights for Zip and Jaz storage and described the project as a way to preserve physical media and assert data autonomy as servers shut down and subscription models replace ownership.

Other contributors showed hacked or repurposed hardware, turning the event into a kind of cyberpunk show-and-tell. Lee described Dead Internet Theory as a space to highlight "artists who don't see the light of day," a place where people can share what they've built and collaborate directly.

Dead Internet Theory offers a counterpoint to contemporary digital life by making physical interfaces and ephemeral formats visible and social. It surfaces practical questions — how do people preserve access to content when servers go offline, and what does it mean to own digital material — while also creating moments of in-person connection that older hardware facilitates.

• The event mixes playable retro consoles, vintage Apple hardware and DIY installations to encourage hands-on exploration rather than passive consumption.
• Projects like the Zip-disk installation make the practical implications of format obsolescence and data ownership visible and tangible.