I like exploring Geocities. I think it’s for the same reasons I like exploring abandoned buildings and thrift stores. You can feel the ghosts of previous tenants and wonder what significance the various mismatched items might have ever had.
My favorite aspects of Geocities/Angelfire/Tripod sites:
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Fan pages for forgotten bands, illegible because of the tiled picture of the band “Ace of Base” in the background, or conversely, because of it’s yellow text on a yellow and white tiled pattern.
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Sci-Fi fan pages raving about really marginal movies (“Wow! Tank Girl sure lived up to all my expectations!”).
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Little animated “Under construction” construction worker Gif’s on pages last updated in 1996.
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Pictures of pets, probably now deceased.
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Page hit counters registering in single digits.
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Web diaries that start out with daily entries, become more intermittent, then sputter out completely six months later (many of these end with something along the lines of “Oh my god! He finally asked me out!”…).
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Incoherent flames against ___________ (insert teacher, boyfriend, boss, ex-friend, government institution, feminism, etc.).
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Scanned images that are WAY too big or totally the wrong format (bitmaps). I love seeing that broken image icon too!
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Hints for long obsolete video games and systems.
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Broken-Link-O-Rama!!
Seriously, does Geocities ever kill anything? I just found MY first page, done like four years ago and never once updated. I was just getting the hang of HTML and I fall into about four of above categories.