23 / 12 / 2010 - 14 : 00
w/o June 24th 2024
write about digital ghosts. explore the remnants of a person– a digital footprint, if you will– that lingers even after active online presence fades. what does it mean for us to have two selves– the real life, which is ever-changing, and the online, which will always be every version of you at once, keeping the old and new.
CW: mention of death.
The puzzling display in front of you is one of only three remnants in the whole Universe of the first artefact I ever created with HTML.
The site has long been offline, only existing in the Wayback Machine due to the machinations of some Internet crawler - this particular screenshot is the earliest one, dated August 18th 2013.
I have redacted any personal information that might lead someone down a rabbit hole concerning my identity, as I do hold my internet privacy quite dear: dear enough to try to scrub any mention of any name I have ever had off the Internet - except for this one.
I don’t know why I don’t have a specific interest in having these screenshots removed (not that I think it would be possible anyway): if anything, they are far more embarrassing than anything I have ever put online combined.
It was born as a fan forum for High School Musical, however it somehow devolved into a catch-all monstrosity with a forum category for every possible thing an elementary-school-aged child could ever possibly want or know.
There are some fun remnants of Ye Not-So-Old (late 2000s) Internet on there: glitter titles with watermarks in the bottom-right corner, a chat with 4 people sending ‘hi’s back and forth over the span of several months, and a link advertising ‘spammer’ positions for the site (I hope you can forgive my child self for that - if it is of any consolation, we did not get any applications after all).
Apparently it was the 280th highest-rated forum on the platform at some point - which is… concerning.
My last update as admin, as you can see in the screenshot, was made on December 23rd 2010, 2pm local time. I have a sneaking suspicion that my grandmother’s death less than two months later may have been the final nail in the coffin for my interest in the site - or anything at all, for that matter.
I didn’t remember creating this website so early on - there are many things I don’t remember, in fact: I don’t remember half of the thread categories, I don’t remember who the other admin is, I don’t remember whom I was eagerly exchanging texts back and forth with on the chat, though it seems we were rather close.
But I remember some of the threads and updates I made, just like I remember being on many websites that perhaps I shouldn’t have been allowed to be on. Perhaps none of it should have been allowed.
I remember the euphoric shiver running down my spine when I checked the leaderboard and found out my website had suddenly jumped all the way to the 280th place - and though I was certainly proud of this achievement, I remember there weren’t many people I could have celebrated with. There were none, really.
And I remember this site being so very dear to me, like many other things that don’t exist anymore. Like many other people that don’t exist anymore.
One of those people is the person who made that website: I don’t recognise them, I don’t remember them - I don’t want to. For me there is no joy in recalling that person, because I know what happens to them next - and they don’t. And I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all, actually.
So as far as I’m concerned, that person can be officially declared dead as of December 23rd 2010, 2pm local time. May they rest in peace, floating in the ether of a decade-year-old broken link on archive.org.
it seems I have been taking about death a lot lately - apologies for that, I am doing quite well actually. I suppose it's just one of those things you end up thinking about more and more as the years pile on. either way, thanks for reading!