link rot

let us talk about my favorite topic: LINK ROT also known as MYSPACE LOST 12 YEARS OF MUSIC HISTORY AND THERE’S NOTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT

history and documentation is something i care about, because it’s crazy how quickly people start making shit up when there’s nobody to say otherwise.

then history starts repeating itself and everyone’s like “omg how could we let this happen” and the handful of people that were there from the beginning are in the back shaking their heads like “we tried to tell you but the proof was in a bedroom track from 2006” and now we’ll never know who invented deep electro dumpwave.

SERIOUSLY though link rot matters. the half-life of a link, depending on which citation you pick from wikipedia (haha i’m not doing more footwork here, get real), is roughly two years, meaning half of all links on the internet go dark every two years. you can see this in action all over the place, just go back in time on your facebook feed and click on links you shared a year, two years, three years ago. a lot of them will be gone and there’s no way to find them again.

the internet is a place of constant movement and upheaval, and this trend only gets worse as we centralize onto social networks that have no reason to fart a single concern towards the preservation or documentation of what is very literally our history and culture.

if you care about something, DOCUMENT IT, bring it into physical form, into the real world, transform it into new mediums. don’t trust facebook or instagram or twitter to preserve any of your genius or the beautiful interactions you have with friends and strangers. never trust these behemoths farther than you can throw them. take the preservation of your identity and your culture into YOUR HANDS.