Exploring the Abandoned Internet [Vol. 1]

Today we start our exploration of the abandoned side of the internet. Let's see what the web is hiding.

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Videos Used:
Envato Elements
Pexels
Adobe Stock

Music:
SH3 - Never Forgive Me, Never Forget Me
SH2 - Heaven's Night
Half-Life - Vague Voices
Amnesia Rebirth - Fear System Safe

Outro:
Night Raptor - Revelation (ft. Starforce)

[cauliflowerconnoisseur]

I remember my brother showing me the Heavens Gate website in the early 2000's when i was a kid. He kept telling me they were gonna come kidnap me and i had nightmares for weeks lmao.

[mellowapocalypse]

My favorite thing about the time cube guy is that he challenged people to disprove his theory so a bunch of MIT students invited him to their school. They literally disproved his theory to his face. Dude got ripped to shreds & then went on to still argue his theory was correct until he died. Dedication.

[missilegirl]

“I can’t wait to ascend with my fellow Heaven’s Gates members” “sorry you have to stay behind and update the website”

[EzeePosseTV]

ActiveWorlds 3D member here (since 1999).

Thanks for covering our virtual worlds of times past. I've built many worlds within the ActiveWorlds (AW) environment and also worked for AW for a while. There were a lot of offshoot 3D world clients using the AW engine and infrastructure that I was involved in (mainly OuterWorlds 3D [OW]).

I remember when it was a bustling hive of chatters, builders, gamers, fetishers and much more. Was quite saddening to slowly watch it die off to where only a few die-hards still come in, lol.

I go between Second-Life and AW now, though I'm dying to try VR-Chat (waited many many years for a good VR chat environment like this) but my computer is old and not able to handle running the VR-Chat client.

I can't really afford a high end gaming PC on caregiver pay, I wish I could though.

[AmberCommentsThings]

The fact there are some people dedicated to internet archaeology shows how insanely vast and incomprehensible the web is. We invented it, yet we ourselves don't all know every single dark corner that exists

[theprinceofinadequatelighting]

Seeing the 9/11 Memorial on Activeworlds was surreal for me... I was actually on Activeworlds on that day, and I remember people talking about what had happened, and the general confusion and anger and sadness. I was a kid and didn't really get the full meaning of what was going on, but I think for a lot of people, having a community and people to be around and mourn together with was really comforting against the horror and probably really helpful for some. Seeing the empty memorial was... kinda like the vessel of that comfort and community had been tipped over and spilled with nobody left to clean it up.

[Knights_Oath]

Personal websites gave the pre social media internet character and a soul. It was always fun to go down a rabbit hole and stumble on sites like the Cubed Time theory.

[terryechoes]

The digital memorials are actually kind of touching, in a somber sort of way. People cared more for their community back then, I suppose.

[salam-peace]

These old ActiveWorlds servers remind me of old Minecraft server communities actually.
There is a german Minecraft server that was started in 2011 and that I first joined in 2013, and that I still sometimes occasionally play on, the server has kept an active community to this day, with some people from back then still being active. This server also still has the same original map from 2011 which means there are buildings on this map that are up to 12 years old. Many people have left memories on this server over the course of the years.

And a very tragic thing, there have actually been two players from this server that passed away, with their buildings being kept and protected on the server as a memorial. Visiting these buildings on the server of players that have passed away feels very haunting.

[Knights_Oath]

They did a documentary on the two surviving Heavens Gate members that are alive and maintain the web site. They still believe that nonsense and see it as their sacred duty to maintain it.

[randomanton]

it's cool that you explored the 90s Internet... People really cant understand how it was back when the Internet was a new frontier. We really didn't know at the time how lucky we were to experience those moments.

[mikadeca]

Years back, when google was still search oriented instead the ad friendly wasteland it is today, you could still come across very old Blogger sites with some of the most obscure and unhinged stuff you could ever see and read. From folks rambling about the MK Ultra to some posting about pieces of literature/comics/videos and such now lost to time.

[slurker]

this older guy in highschool (1999-2003) had a hobby of wandering into the library during spare, logging into a pc as a guest, going to the timecube website then setting the computer to read it out loud before locking the pc and walking away

[misterknightowlandco]

God, I miss the old internet when it was just us computer nerds. It really was the Wild West.

[javierortiz]

The memorials on Active Worlds are commonplace in pretty much every internet community that's been up long enough to lose members. I play Ragnarok Online on a server that's been up for over 15 years and we have a memorial room on it where you can visit the characters of those who passed away in "ghost form" and leave a comment. I feel it's a necessary feature to mourn those friends who you met online and maybe never got to see face to face. I've traveled abroad to meet some of them, it's an experience that it's impossible to replicate for everyone you meet in such scenario.

[Baro_Fjellheim]

When I saw and heard the explanation of Active Worlds I was just thinking "Active Worlds walked so VRChat could run."

[whatisreal]

abandoned websites will always have a somewhat liminal space feeling. Knowing it was once full of people and seeing it inactive is eerie.

[DuckOfRubber]

I think you were confusing Halley Comet and Hale-Bopp Comet during the Heaven’s Gate section. They are two separate comets. Hale-Bopp is the one connected to Heaven’s Gate. Halley comes by (relatively, for a comet) frequently, every 75-80 years, while Hale-Bopp’s orbit brings it by only every 2500 years.

[Omnywrench]

Time Cube used to be a source of mild amusement for me but now it just makes me sad, as I recently discovered that the author of this website was suffering from untreated schizophrenia, not only that, but other people would write to him or even interview him just to essentially egg him on or just put his insanity on display for others to gawk at. Seems pretty obvious now, considering the rampant, paranoid ramblings that make up Time Cube, but in retrospect I wish he had gotten proper treatment instead of being turned into the internet equivalent of a circus freak.

[leviheidle]

Activ World is like the online equivalent of exploring an abandoned mall