Tag: internet culture

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.)