Club Jade

Another meme Vaderized…

Yahoo will be closing down GeoCities later this year, and I’d like to ask for a moment of silence.

No, really.

It may be hard to fathom now, but back a decade or so ago, when this here internet was still shiny and new, the free web space that GeoCities was as important to fandom as… Well, blogs and forums and wikis and Livejournal are now. It was the place where people were driven by their passion for whatever random bit of… whatever… made sites dedicated to their foci. Sure, it looks goofy now. (To quote Heidi MacDonald: “If you want to see the Web as it existed ten years ago just find any webpage hosted on GeoCities.”) It’s certainly not where fandom – even internet fandom – began, but it’s an important touchstone. And soon it’ll be gone.

Here are a few sites where you can get a feel for the internets of fandom past:

• The Women of Star Wars Home Page

• Shack’s Fanfic Clearinghouse
• Imperial Women
• The Emperor’s Hand

At least we’ll always have the Wayback Archive – not that anyone can actually remember those giant 90′s URLs.

Scour your bookmarks (or take offerings to Google) and drop your old favorites in the comments. (Basic HTML works.)

Sister Salad’s Alexandra and Lizz in ‘Yo Comments Are Whack!’ Good advice for all! (via)

(The followup is pretty funny, too.)

People often have trouble detecting tone on the internet, the New York Times finds. Really? I’m shocked.

A kung-fu monk is demanding an apology from some dude on the internet for claiming that many monks were defeated by a single ninja. Pirates vs. ninjas so last season. (Thanks, Aaron!)

There are girls on the internet. They’ve even infiltrated the Wookieepedia. Try to contain your shock. (via Jezebel)

If business meetings were like the internet. Warning: Crudeness, language, random spamming.