Goodbye, Internet of My Youth

It's a day a younger me would never have thought would come: Geocities has closed. As I stop and think about it, it's mind boggling.

My first real foray into the Internet and online social interaction was roleplaying in chatrooms on AOL, circa 1996. I was a real geeky kid (no surprise) and my love of tabletop roleplaying, anime, and console RPGs found chatroom roleplaying a potent drug. I created several characters whose lives were just as real to me as my own, who I lived through, and events in their lives I'll always remember.

Every character on AOL had their own profile within their account, but some had a separate character profile on AOL Hometown or Geocities. This was back when HTML was incredibly impressive and the people with these custom created webpages were the dedicated gamers. A couple of cribbed pictures of vampires, drawings of castles, and white text on a black HTML background was the coolest thing around. I eventually got on the bandwagon and created my own, complete with my character sheet, a layout for my character's house, and a list of my adventures. It was unfortunately deleted after I stopped logging in years ago but if I close my eyes I can still remember the layout and the red-on-black text.

These primitive webpages are a vivid part of my teenage memories, and so it is with heavy heart that I pour one out for my homey, Geocities.

Yahoo Quietly Pulls The Plug On Geocities

RIP GeoCities, You Will Be Missed