“IT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING”: The Long-Lost David Bowie Interview That Warned Us About the Internet — 25 Years Ago 💻

Leave it to David Bowie, the eternal alien in eyeliner, to look at a beige box with dial-up static screeching in the background and declare, with the conviction of a man who once wore glitter capes without irony, that the internet was “the new rock n’ roll. ”

Yes, back in 1999, when the rest of us were still struggling to figure out if AOL chatrooms were safe or just full of men pretending to be 19-year-old girls, Bowie looked into the digital void and said, “This thing? This is it.

This is the revolution. ”

And everyone laughed, rolled their eyes, and went back to playing Snake on their Nokia phones.

Two decades later, he looks less like a rock star and more like a cyber Nostradamus, the kind of prophet who didn’t just predict streaming, social media, and influencers, but also predicted the terrifying curse of being trapped in a group chat with your aunt who still forwards Minion memes.

 

Back then, Bowie sat across from BBC interviewer Jeremy Paxman, who practically sneered at him like he’d just suggested pigeons would one day run the government.

“The internet is just a tool, right?” Paxman said with the smugness of a man who thought Hotmail was cutting-edge.

But Bowie, blue-eyed and smirking like he had just dropped acid with the ghost of Andy Warhol, said, “No.

It’s more than that.

It’s an alien lifeform.

It’s going to crush everything.

” Paxman chuckled.

Bowie didn’t.

Fast-forward to today, when TikTok teens are selling out arenas, Twitter has replaced newspapers, and AI is writing bad fanfiction, and suddenly Bowie’s words don’t sound insane — they sound like prophecy scrawled on the back of a vinyl sleeve.

Cultural “expert” Dr.

Lydia Morningside told us, “Bowie wasn’t just predicting the rise of the internet.

He was predicting the collapse of the entire music industry, the rise of memes as culture, and the death of privacy.

He basically foresaw Twitter wars, Instagram thirst traps, and even Grimes dating Elon Musk.

Honestly, it’s disturbing.

” Meanwhile, fans online have taken Bowie’s old interview clips and turned them into TikToks, because nothing proves his point better than having his prophecy reduced to a fifteen-second edit with sparkly captions and the caption “he ate this prediction fr.

”

Let’s not pretend Bowie didn’t know what he was talking about.

The man reinvented himself more times than your average influencer changes Instagram bios.

Ziggy Stardust? Proto-TikTok filter.

The Thin White Duke? Literally just the 1970s version of a moody Twitter rebrand.

 

“Let’s Dance”? That was him inventing viral dance challenges before TikTok even existed.

He saw that rock n’ roll wasn’t just music, it was disruption, rebellion, culture-shaping energy.

And by 1999, Bowie looked around and saw that guitars were losing to modems.

Grunge was already fizzling out.

Boy bands were everywhere.

And what was lurking in the shadows? Chatrooms, Napster, LimeWire, and the dark promise of everyone having the ability to publish their unhinged opinions at the click of a button.

Bowie basically said: this is it, this is the future, and oh boy, it’s going to ruin us.

And ruin us it did — but in the most entertaining way possible.

Bowie predicted a world where artists didn’t need labels to reach fans, where power shifted from industry gatekeepers to the masses.

Today, any kid with GarageBand and a Wi-Fi connection can drop a song on SoundCloud and become famous overnight.

Lil Nas X rode memes into Billboard history.

Doja Cat turned “moo” into a cultural phenomenon.

None of this makes sense unless you view it through Bowie’s lens: the internet is chaos, and chaos is the new rock n’ roll.

Forget smashed guitars.

Forget hotel room destruction.

Today’s rock n’ roll rebellion is livestreaming yourself eating Tide Pods for clout.

But here’s the kicker: Bowie didn’t just predict the internet as a tool for art.

He predicted it as a monster.

 

He called it “exhilarating and terrifying. ”

Terrifying? Oh, you mean like Facebook data leaks, Twitter mobs, cancel culture, or that time your private search history accidentally synced to your smart TV? Exhilarating? Sure, if you find joy in endless memes about Shrek and an algorithm that knows you better than your therapist.

Bowie wasn’t talking about Wi-Fi convenience.

He was talking about the cultural earthquake.

He was saying: strap in, kids, because once this hits, you’re never unplugging.

And of course, leave it to Bowie to be sexier about it than anyone else.

He didn’t just say “the internet is big. ”

He said it was “an alien lifeform. ”

Who else could compare dial-up to a sentient extraterrestrial and make it sound both seductive and apocalyptic? Fake tech analyst Gary Dunst said, “If Elon Musk said this, we’d laugh him out of the room.

But Bowie? Bowie made it sound like the internet was about to take us on a cosmic date and maybe ruin our credit score in the process. ”

And he was right.

The internet didn’t just change music.

It changed relationships, politics, fame, and even identity itself.

Today, half the population pretends to be someone else online, which is exactly what Bowie was doing in real life in the seventies.

Ziggy Stardust was basically his Twitter persona before Twitter existed.

The funniest part of this whole saga is Paxman’s smug disbelief.

 

Watching that interview today feels like watching someone scoff at a caveman discovering fire.

Paxman basically said, “Surely this internet thing won’t matter. ”

Meanwhile, Bowie stared into the camera with the weary wisdom of a prophet who had already seen Twitter trending topics and knew humanity was doomed.

One fan wrote on Reddit, “This is like watching a god explain the future to a toddler. ”

Another said, “Bowie predicting TikTok thirst traps in 1999 is why I believe in time travel. ”

And honestly, can you blame them? Bowie always looked like he was two seconds away from teleporting to another dimension.

Maybe he really did peek into the future and see kids flossing in Fortnite.

Hollywood, naturally, is foaming at the mouth to capitalize on this.

There’s already talk of turning Bowie’s 1999 interview into a full-blown documentary, complete with dramatic re-enactments of him typing on a Windows 95 keyboard while lightning crashes outside.

Netflix allegedly wants Harry Styles to play Bowie in flashbacks, because apparently every role now requires Styles in glitter pants.

Meanwhile, HBO wants to frame it as a “dark warning about digital addiction,” with Jared Leto staring at a screen for three hours.

If Bowie taught us anything, it’s that we’ll glamorize the apocalypse as long as it comes with eyeliner and a good soundtrack.

But let’s be real: Bowie predicting the internet is the ultimate Bowie move.

Of course he saw it coming.

Of course he framed it as a cosmic force instead of a boring tech tool.

And of course, twenty years later, we’re still unpacking what he said like it was scripture.

 

He was never just a musician.

He was a cultural mirror.

He gave us Ziggy, the Duke, and Major Tom, and then he gave us the internet prophecy — his final character, the Digital Nostradamus.

So here we are, living in Bowie’s vision.

The internet is rock n’ roll.

It’s loud, chaotic, rebellious, and a little bit stupid.

It has created gods and destroyed careers.

It has made memes into currency and turned influencers into millionaires.

It’s Bowie’s prophecy realized in real time, and you can almost hear him laughing from beyond, smirking in some other galaxy where Wi-Fi is eternal and glitter is mandatory.

In the end, Bowie didn’t just predict the internet.

He predicted us.

Our obsessions.

Our chaos.

Our addiction to the next viral hit.

He saw that the real rock n’ roll rebellion wasn’t about guitars or leather jackets anymore.

It was about information, speed, and the ability to break the world with a single post.

And maybe that’s the ultimate Bowie legacy: not just changing music, but changing the way we understand culture itself.

So next time you scroll endlessly at 3 a. m. , trapped in a TikTok algorithm hole, or watch a meme become more famous than an Oscar winner, just remember: Bowie told you so.

He warned you in 1999, and you didn’t listen.

He saw the alien lifeform, and it’s living in your phone.