I went online today to try to find the oldest trace of myself on the internet. Following a brief, and rather unpleasant introduction somewhere in 2000, I came online again in 2005, and since 2006, most of the text I’ve written is hauntingly well archived and available on servers all across the world. But we’re not here to talk about disturbing privacy issues, but about how far back can you trace yourself.
First, let’s see how far we can go into 2000. I was 13 or something, and am really not proud of the things I wrote, said or did. But then again, I don’t approve of anything I said or did more than fifteen minutes ago.
I didn’t write anything on public domain websites, so that was out of the question. I was in the US utilizing an old, near throwaway PC with an 80mb hard drive. I remember some of the things I used to do with it, but it’s rather vague.
I had a yahoo id. I used to do stuff with it. I remember it had to do with my zip code then, but only I typed it in wrong. Instead of 94587, I kept it as 98547. I remember the ID was something like anirudh_2000_98547.
[update]A little searching later, I found it’s actually ani_2000_98547. You can see the results of the search here but the annoying thing is it’s not letting me find my password. I wrote a polite li’l email to the yahoo staff, and explained I haven’t logged in for seven years, and gave some details that might confirm that I’m me. But let’s see how that turned out.
Also, I remember I tried to build a website, but it was a ridiculous load of trash, mostly because I went to geocities and put a bajillion different oddities on the page, well, it was plain fu*ing ugly. This was mostly inspired by a classmate’s webspace, hosted on geocities, under the username, absolute_dictator. Well, the classmate in question, Shawn McDonald, went on to publish the content on his own domain name psycho-ward.org, ensuring he won’t have so much of a headache finding his archived data. Of course, it’s now parked, and he’s on the Agnoiologist.
But still, I’m no closer to finding the oldest archived information about me. The annoying thing is seaching for my name results in thousands of links to oneclick, rendering it useless.
Now, I guess it’s time to give up and head over to the newer ones. I remember I wrote on a blogspot.com subdomain weblog, but I deleted all the posts by accident, almost a year’s worth of them. And yes, it wasn’t called “insane ramblings of a lunatic madman” as all blogspot weblogs are called today, but was simply “Thought Outflux”, and the articles from 2005 are now missing. I’ve got the occasional copy from here and there, so I was largely invisible before 2006. Most of my other traces have also disappeared.
Sigh, now I have five domain names, high end hosting and google tells me I’m the second most popular for my first name. Yet even google’s lost the cache data for my content, and it’s unsearchable.
It’s not about the internet. It’s about going back in time, and seeing figments of yourself, and comforting yourself in the fact that you’ve changed. Heck, just try reading your email from high school(rishi, you’re still in high school, but anyways) and you’ll smack yourself in the face, it’s about positive change, it’s about growth, it’s about evolution.
[update] I remembered I just once checked what usenet and newsgroups were about because outlook express supported them. After a little searching, an hour after my quest started, I found this: the oldest archived content from me, a question “do parallel universes exist?”, and the answer “do you exist?”.
The usenet signatures date it at february 3h 2001, and in two days, it would be exactly seven years ago.
[Link] It’s finally a happy ending. Now playing: Ozzy Osborne – Mr. Crowley’s solo by Randy Rhoads. the most ideal song for a momennt like this.
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