Internet graveyards

I have always loved the internet, let's get that out of the way. For an introvert like me, having access to an entire world that is unlike anything humanity has seen so far, all from the comfort of my own home, was a godsend. I was never good at the usual stuff people use the net for, such as social networking or promoting whatever content they had.

Rather, I took an explorer's attitude towards the internet. Since the internet was man-made and the only ones using it were humans, it'd reflect human personality in the way it'd be shaped, with the important caveat that the internet afforded anonymity. We now know that the anonymity part is false, but, the sense of it is still there. There is a sense of liberation in letting something loose onto the World Wide Web from behind a pseudonym.

I have a lot to talk about if I get started on the internet, but what I want to talk about today is relevant to my attempted reboot of my blog, one that looks to be over before it started, which brings me to the title of my post.

Though the internet is a relatively new technology, its growth has been phenomenal. People from all across the globe have joined in, created their content, and as they have grown older, have abandoned what they created. These creations, websites, blogs, forums, now lie dormant on the web servers awaiting a final deletion, and one can often come across these things by accident.

I was browsing the blogs on my sidebar list today, and apart from one, which migrated to another blog, none of them are active. Some have been inactive for one year, some two, and some three. In case that doesn't seem so long, a year is a long time on the internet, where things move really, really fast.

It is a strange coincidence that these people, along with me, stopped blogging at pretty much the same time. It's like a period of life went by during which blogging was an ambition, and then poof, it was left behind.

If you bother to look, there are many other sites like these. Sites created when a particular activity was an obsession for people and then one fine day they decided that it didn't matter anymore. Sites for that one movie that we loved when we were 15, sites for that teen celebrity we adored, sites for the latest world shattering event in high school and so on.

So now these sites lie abandoned. They don't rust or break down like physical structures. They still look as fresh as the day they were created, but a quick browse through them reveals their age, the content that is not relevant anymore, the issues that have had their day bare testimony to the passion that was.

There are also hastily built sites that were quickly abandoned, a spur of the moment decision that was never followed up on. These are awkward things, lying haphazardly around the web, not knowing what they're supposed to do.

There is also consolation and the occasional wisdom to be gleaned from these sites. We realise that the problems that we face currently were also faced by countless others, and that gives a comforting perspective. Seeing the sites people made over trivial stuff makes us less embarrassed about stuff we liked that now seem silly.

I suppose talking about websites like this enforces the point that I really, really love the internet. I'll see if there are active blogs around that are going the path and maybe the reboot will be possible.