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Geocities' impending destruction is depressing me. Why, I remember back in the day when it seemed like 90% of the internet was Geocities (the other 10% was Fortunecity, Tripod, etc.). I get especially agonized when I think about all the old sites and fanfics that will be wiped out forever, with nary a trace left. (Granted, I probably would agonize more that I was even agonizing to begin with if I bothered to try and reread some of them. But let's not ruin the memory of my formative years, here.)
I mean, they say that once you put something on the internet it'll be out there in the wild forever, but what happens if you hunt it to extinction? Not that I'm equating Geocities with the Dodo or the Passenger Pigeon . . . I'm just sayin'.
I keep envisioning it as one of those disaster movie tidal wives . . . a big white wave reaching up, engulfing the (geo)cities. When the water recedes there's nothing left but pure white digital beach. To be quickly overwritten with something else, no doubt. And then as the Yahoo servers were purged, they whirred and went silent (or conversely, some worker stands around holding a bunch of unplugged cables laughing maniacally). Of course, Geocities is now like the seedy underbelly of Teh Internets; crumbling, half-remembered, obsolete and outdated, a plethora of personal sites and shrines lurking under a landscape shaped by Wordpress blogs, livejournals, and wikias.
It's probably its time. We've grown beyond you now, Geocities, birthplace of awkward first webpages, holder of the things we create in those embarrassing teenage years (which I have dutifully mirrored on the Pit of Voles because I'm apparently really a masochist), home of really ugly graphics that are now too small for our screens. We give you permission to frolic in the Digital Void where the free versions of Fortunecity and Tripod went afore ye. You know, where Onelist went before Yahoo Groups ate it. Survival of the fittest, evolution in action, the end result of an enterprise that . . . really made no money after all, huh, Yahoo?
Farewell, last of the lumbering dinosaurs. We'll remember you fondly and probably think of you at the end of the Jurassic Age when our wikis and blogs are wiped out and replaced by something else, maybe in 3-D.
Good-bye, Tokyo Palace 3649. It was a lot of fun.
. . . shit, now I really DO have to work on the website. Also, yeah, if you have anything you wanna save off your old websites, better do it now.
I mean, they say that once you put something on the internet it'll be out there in the wild forever, but what happens if you hunt it to extinction? Not that I'm equating Geocities with the Dodo or the Passenger Pigeon . . . I'm just sayin'.
I keep envisioning it as one of those disaster movie tidal wives . . . a big white wave reaching up, engulfing the (geo)cities. When the water recedes there's nothing left but pure white digital beach. To be quickly overwritten with something else, no doubt. And then as the Yahoo servers were purged, they whirred and went silent (or conversely, some worker stands around holding a bunch of unplugged cables laughing maniacally). Of course, Geocities is now like the seedy underbelly of Teh Internets; crumbling, half-remembered, obsolete and outdated, a plethora of personal sites and shrines lurking under a landscape shaped by Wordpress blogs, livejournals, and wikias.
It's probably its time. We've grown beyond you now, Geocities, birthplace of awkward first webpages, holder of the things we create in those embarrassing teenage years (which I have dutifully mirrored on the Pit of Voles because I'm apparently really a masochist), home of really ugly graphics that are now too small for our screens. We give you permission to frolic in the Digital Void where the free versions of Fortunecity and Tripod went afore ye. You know, where Onelist went before Yahoo Groups ate it. Survival of the fittest, evolution in action, the end result of an enterprise that . . . really made no money after all, huh, Yahoo?
Farewell, last of the lumbering dinosaurs. We'll remember you fondly and probably think of you at the end of the Jurassic Age when our wikis and blogs are wiped out and replaced by something else, maybe in 3-D.
Good-bye, Tokyo Palace 3649. It was a lot of fun.
. . . shit, now I really DO have to work on the website. Also, yeah, if you have anything you wanna save off your old websites, better do it now.
