The Internet has changed so much since the invention of Smart phones and Social Media so much that the Internet barely resembles what it used to be. On top of that so much of the old Internet has been destroyed through waves of cultural purges and in such a climate it’s important to save as much of it that is still with us today. The Internet of the 90’s and 2000’s had a kind of creativity that no longer exists and cannot be recreated. Sites such as Angelfire and Tripod express the culture of those time periods and give a look at a better time of the Internet.

The destruction of Geocities, FortuneCity, AlterVista and more cost us vast amounts of cultural memory; taking from us countless projects, hand made gifs, midi files, game mods, levels, fan pages and an entire archive of Internet culture of the 90’s and 2000’s. They represent a culture of true creativity, personal expression and grassroots innovation. When these websites were destroyed we lost a record of this past entirely.

Now Lycos, a company that once championed Internet freedom and creativity are planning to repeat this heinous act by announcing their intent to purge all content from Angelfire and Tripod. If they carry out this abhorrent act of cultural vandalism they would erase countless websites that embodied this creative spirit.

It would simple for Lycos to give an entire archive of these sites to archivists such as the Internet Archive but instead they choose senseless destruction over preservation. This ignores the importance of archiving the past and preserving the time capsule that such sites represent. Twitter gave thousands of terabytes of their data to the Library of Congress for preservation yet Lycos chose to destroy decades of history without considering the grave cultural implications.

I urge Lycos to reconsider their decision, and instead initiate a preservation program in collaboration with digital archivists and institutions. This would safeguard the digital art and history encapsulated within these WebPages while respecting the economic needs and constraints of maintaining such an archive.

Join me in petitioning Lycos to protect and preserve the Angelfire and Tripod websites. Please sign this petition and voice your support to save this irreplaceable part of Internet history.