With a new exhibit in New York chronicling the rise and development of the internet, through the archiving and display of old web pages, I find myself nostalgic for the late '90s and early 2000s. This isn't because I think that the online world is worse now than it was then. In fact, in spite of more people doing more things, it's roughly the same focus, that being communication and interaction. No, I find myself nostalgic because I miss the sites and social networks that no longer exist.
In my youth, I was fortunate enough to stumble onto a couple online communities that I got along with great. I knew of a few sites that I liked visiting and there were movements that were exciting and engaging at the time, though with some I was unable to participate due to my lack of programming skills. However, as I reflect on those favorite places from a decade ago, I realize that for the most part they've all disappeared.
There was, once, a message board where I found an international crew of interesting and insightful people, many of whom I'm still in contact with through other means, such as Facebook and similar. But, if I were to go to that site right now, I'd notice that nobody is posting or commenting, and what was our little corner of the internet has effectively died.
There's no special reason for that collapse in traffic. There wasn't a big fall out where a ton of people got angry and left, or some other shocking event that caused a lack of interest. In reality, the reasons behind that collapse are relatively dull - we all grew up and got jobs. With adult lives came less opportunity to mess around online and less incentive to talk about the things that were important to us as kids. I stopped going both because the activity was drying up, and because I had other concerns that limited the amount of time I could spend there.
It's natural, and a consequence of growing up. Everyone has people from their high school years who they just don't keep in touch with anymore. But that said, it is kind of sad to think of that group dispersing and not really interacting very much anymore. Plus, it's often more difficult to track down those old friends, since you often don't know their real name and email addresses tend to change over that time.
Of course, that's not the only thing that's gone from those days. I know of once popular sites that have since collapsed due to administrative indifference or strange and complicated drama. Different scenes pop up and die off in rapid succession, and different hobbies become popular and then suddenly disappear. The value of any internet archive might come from those snippets in the past were people gathered together in pursuit of a common goal, and then dispersed for reasons often more elaborate than the notes they leave.
It's strange to consider that my high school years could potentially be archived and placed on a museum display as culturally significant. That said, they actually are, as the whole social media revolution started with people on message boards and other online spaces, discussing various things that were important to them. Even as those groups die out or dissipate, somewhere in an archive those memories are stashed, like an old yearbook.
