the best and saddest thing on the internet to me is dead and defunct content - the still-standing electronic remains of people who are no longer here or no longer the same people who created them, all the links long defunct and the purpose long gone
your geocities pages, your forum threads, your facebook posts, may outlive you. everything you make may one day be an electronic ghost town, just glimpses of what was once an evolving part of someone’s life. look on the internet, ye mighty, and despair.
Of course, the other perspective on this is the exact reverse.
Around the colossal wreck, we are told, nothing beside remains – of this once-great kingdom, we must assume, of this king powerful enough to leave the tiniest fingerprint for us to see.
A ghost town is sad because of what might have been. The conversations that might have been had, the toys which might have been given to children and the young lesbians who might have ducked behind the store. The flecks of paint and the trails in the dust and the fingerprints.
But as for us – glimpses? Your Facebook page might outlive your grandchildren. All my friends I have on here – just on here – I have made through this one blog. How often have you scrolled through someone blog and thought “I would love to be friends with this person”? Why should 100 years make a difference? Glimpses? These are portraits and movies and snapshots and selfies and journals more deep and more raw than anything we have seen in history.
Look upon my very existent work – the fanfics written and the jokes shared, the stories we’ve woven together and the battles lost and the best of times we’ve had – frozen in amber, perfect as that day they were shared. Look upon my work and share it with me, laugh at my flaws and chide my innocence, listen to my rants and learn from my mistakes.
Folk’s not dead while their name’s remembers, we say as we read a book again and again and again, letting that one character live a desperate, vibrant life again and again and again… and us? HOW MANY NAMES WE HAVE.
We are not doomed to be Ozymandias – we will be the traveller, from our very own antique land, wandering endlessly and greeting every diver into the archives as yet another chance to live again.
LOOK UPON THE INTERNET, ye mighty – and live.
(via bronzedragon)
