a celebration of a bygone era

The internet is a living graveyard. It’s constantly growing and evolving, more and more people adding to the collective pile of information. Always made me think of ants. We’re all just worker drones contributing our little piece to the overall anthill. The contribution of all the drones is vital, yet if you one day vanish, the anthill won’t stop for you - it’ll keep on trucking, more drones, more growth.

And yet, your contribution is never fully forgotten. Things you post are little snapshots into, well, you. A heated comment you left on a fandom debate post on Tumblr in 2014, a random Reddit post asking for help with a specific tech issue, a Tweet expressing your distaste for the way things are going. You can delete these posts, sure, but someone remembers it. I haven’t logged into Tumblr since 2016, yet my whole blog is out there to discover.

That’s where the graveyard comes in. I’ve recently developed the hobby of browsing as much of the “old” internet as I can. There’s a melancholy to scrolling through an old Pokémon forum site I used to frequent. The site is pretty much “dead” now, and to be frank, it’s a miracle it’s still even up. Digging through argument threads that haven’t been posted to in nine years, checking user profiles to see they last logged in in 2011 fills me with emotion. What emotion, I’m not sure. What happened to these people? Are they even alive? That guy I played Wizard101 with nearly every day after school in 2010, where is he now? What does he do for work? Is he a dog or a cat person? Does he ever stop and reminisce about me? Does he even remember me?

It doesn’t just exist on old forums, too. I’ve recently stumbled upon a tool known as “wiby.me”. It’s a specialized search engine meant to prioritize personal, smaller websites, things that would’ve fit right in in 2006, but might look a little dated now. Best of all, there’s a button that takes you to a completely random site. I’ve lost many an hour to that button, scrolling through these little glimpses into some complete strangers’ personal lives. I may not be able to tell you a single thing about what Susan B. looks like, or even what country she lives in, but I know for a fact that she loves glass, and runs a whole online museum on the history of glass in art. I’m not sure if Ted F. is married or even alive, but I can tell you that he loves Kodak Photo CDs and was trying to find a way to restore them as of 2020, the date of his last site update.

A common ground between all these sites I realized is that they are all archives - a personal family photo album, a collection of visitor submitted ghost stories, a guide to all the road signs in Arizona, a photo chronicle of someone launching a model rocket with two Windows 98 CDs cut in half as tail fins. It’s an archive of photos, sure, but it’s also an archive of these people and who they were when they made those sites. And going through these archives, we can find parts of ourself that we never knew was misplaced.
One night, thanks ot the random button, I found myself on a site belonging to a gentleman named Sandy. Sandy was notable because he seemed to live somewhere close to where I grew up, Southern California. He took the time to post photos of nearly every personal vacation he went on here, all in locations that were notable to my fuzzy, early childhood memory - Disneyland, Lake Tahoe, Anza-Borrego, San Francisco, Dana Point, Balboa Island, Hell, even Las Vegas. All of his photos were from 2001-2010, placing me as just an infant for most of them.

And yet, seeing all the locations Sandy took the time to photograph reminded me of dozens of memories I’d forgotten about. In one photo, taken June 21, 2005, Sandy poses with who I assume to be his wife and grandkid at the archway to the now-demolished Aladdin’s Oasis in Disneyland. That same day, elsewhere in the same park, my mother struggles to get me to pose for a photo with Mickey ears, which I am violently opposed to in my four year old way (Sandy’s grandkid didn’t seem to mind wearing the ears). Thirteen years later, the Oasis would close and be replaced with a tropical tiki bar, one I would take my first high school girlfriend to on our first date.

I spent hours like this. I’d scroll through Sandy’s photos, find one in a place that I remembered, and try and figure out where I was that time. Who was I when Sandy went to Laguna Beach in 2009 and took a photo at the same spot where my brother lost his favorite toy boat to the ocean? I wonder if I’ve ever met Sandy. Or just crossed his path at some point. Maybe I’d held the door open for him at a bathroom in Dana Point.

The one issue with the photos is that they were compressed and low resolution. Exact details couldn’t be made out, it was impossible to read signs in the background to try and geolocate exactly where it was. I couldn’t look up the gift shop on Balboa Island Sandy stood in front of with his son in 2005, despite my vivid memories of playing arcade games in the back corner with my brother (he was always way too good at Ms. Pacman for his own good). The name was simply too blurry to read, and I’m not sure what it was called. The low resolution of the photos was really getting to me. I saw that Sandy linked to a now-defunct site selling framed prints of his photos, so maybe he still had the higher resolution copies? Digging through his site, I found an email address, and shot him a message in the vain hope he’d reply.

“Hello, I happened to stumble upon your website,********.com, and have been browsing your extensive photo collection. I'm currently 22, grew up in Southern California, and have been absolutely loving seeing photos from my childhood. I'm particularly interested in the photos from Disneyland and California Adventure, and was wondering if you had any more you would be willing to share? I don't have many pictures from that time period as I was very young, and would love to take a trip down memory lane from the places I know well. I would also be interested in seeing more from Laguna Beach, Santa Monica Pier, and Balboa Island, if you're willing to share any more. I know there aren't any on the website, but if you have anything at all of Huntington Beach from 2001-2010, i would also be interested. Figured I'd ask about my hometown. Regardless if you share or not, I have had a great time browsing through the photos available and would like to thank you for sharing them. I believe archival of the places around us is super important, and your site has been a wonderful window into a time I only have hazy memories of. Thank you for keeping the site open for all this time. -Michael”

I knew this would appear odd, if the email was even still active, and really didn’t expect a reply. Either the email was no longer checked regularly, or Sandy would be too weirded out to reply to an email inquiring about his decade old website. Shockingly, I got a reply within 24 hours.

“Hello Michael, Thank you for your comments. Unfortunately, only the photos that are posted on the website, which I have not actually updated since 2012, are available. At least many of the locations that you asked about are included. I don’t believe that there are any Huntington Beach photos. I wish I could be of more assistance. I continue to consider whether I will maintain this site since it’s just a hobby for these many years, not used for business, etc, and my host continues to increase annual costs. Best regards, Sandy”

I thanked Sandy for his time and for keeping the website up for so long, despite his lack of the original photos. As of writing this, the site is still up, meaning his host hasn’t made it completely unreasonable to maintain, but I worry. Should the site ever go down, many of these photos will be lost to time. Sure, I can save what photos I want, and I’m sure someone in Sandy’s family has them on an SD card (or a Kodak CD) somewhere, but this little corner of the internet is in danger of fading forever.

And who knows how many sites exactly like Sandy’s are out there. Maybe someone will one day stumble on my tumblr blog and learn something about themself. Maybe one day my old friend will log onto Wizard101 and see if his friends list still has me in it (it does). Hell, maybe Sandy will consider pulling the plug on his website, think about my email, and keep it up just one more year.

Or maybe none of that will happen, Sandy’s site will close, and that’ll be it. And that’s ok too. Because even if the internet forgets you, moves on, leaves you behind, your contribution will resonate and matter to someone. And if that’s true, were you ever really forgotten?


This piece was written for and featured in Wreath! You should check it out :)

please never delete your site, sandy. it's a piece of history, a piece of you, a piece of me.