Today marks a sad day in Internet lore as Yahoo! has shuttered the digital doors of the long-time personal web hosting service Geocities. Geocities began in late 1994 and was one of the early ways for aspiring mavens of the world wide web to post their elaborately hokey tributes to the occult teachings of Aleister Crowley complete with rotating and blinking Unicursal Hexigram icons with horrendous purple backgrounds. It was this potential for the rampant display of obsessive nerdery that led Yahoo! to purchase the service for $3.57 billion in 1999, effectively encouraging people to start About Me pages and Ronnie James Dio fan sites also awash in flashing and spinning icons.
Sadly, that large niche of the Internet reserved for people who get off posting inane bullcrap cared about by a select few has shifted to more user-friendly interfaces offered by blogging and social networking sites. While Geocities hung on for as long as it could, it was announced back in April that the service would cease to be today, October 26th, 2009, hence the trending topic RIP Geocities. And though Geocities is now gone from our midst it is certainly not forgotten as evidenced by the chatter of those on the realtime web, sharing their fond recollections of blinky web atrocities gone by.
With that we say, “Fare thee well, our fine internet friend. You will be missed.” Well, perhaps missed is too strong a word. You will be remembered.
