I was in the 6th grade when me and a friend discovered a funny old website. The content of the website was a long wall of text labeled “The Longest Text Ever”. Even to my 12 year old self this was obviously untrue, I had seen longer texts on the internet before. But, this one was quite special somehow. It was a glimpse into a single person, and the things they were thinking at the time, with literal regard for common sense or coherence. Rants and rambles, events and plans, things that you normally wouldn’t put all in the same page of your website. To me, having grown up for the most part on the new web, it was odd. It was odd to see an entire website run by a single person, to see a page of text that wasn’t considered important or informational. But, the more I read, the more at home I felt. This time capsule of a time before I was alive seemed unusually present, the weird paragraphs about grape pie and organ grinders seemed strangely normal.
I had a feeling then, that this was the way the internet was supposed to be. Not a large centralized commercialized thing, but an amalgam of individual spaces and communities. I looked through the website further, and found a page listing other Longest Text Ever’s (LTE’s). Younger me was astounded that this wasn’t the only page like this, that there were other websites that did the same thing. Websites that, despite having been abandoned for more than a decade, had more life in them than any website I had seen before. I felt enlightened, and inspired. I started on an LTE of my own, and my friend started one as well. I wanted a website to put it on, too. I searched for website building tools, and I tried to use them. But, they all felt empty, what I made with them felt more like the websites of the new lifeless web I was used to. Until I dug deeper, and found Neocities. This empty HTML file would be the blank canvas upon which I paint my masterpiece! I found something else too, more LTE’s. There were some from only a few years ago, others had followed this rabbit hole before me.
So, I kept writing, ranting and rambling. It has been years now, and I have grown to become a respected LTE creator (if such a thing exists). I have even helped to create a hub, to help connect our disparate community members. We tried to find all of the LTE’s we could, and then, others joined as well. From across the world, people found the community I had found myself in the forefront of. They wrote, and just like the original creator, vanished. Some though, keep writing. To this day, me and others are still creating, and still living, in this tiny corner tucked amongst the ruins of the old web.