No, the things you put on the internet won't be up forever.
2025-09-04
If you, like me, were raised with an internet access chances are that the adults in your life warned you that the things you put on the internet will always be there. As a reminder to think of the possible consequences to one's actions, it was probably a good thing but it may also have had a not so good side effect. At least for me, it made me unprepared as to how short of a shelf life things on the internet can really have. That old YouTube video you adored to entire websites that you used to love may disappear on a whim without any warning.
Recently I have spent some time trying to trace my late brother's digital footprint. Slowly I've been working my way through his old YouTube channel’s favorites list, I remember that at some point he did a “cleaning” of his playlists so it’s unfortunately significantly smaller than it was at some point. Furthermore almost half of the videos have since been deleted from the site, while I have been able to recover a couple of them through the Wayback Machine it’s ultimately a pretty weak consolation seeing just how much of it gone possibly forever.
A lot of years have passed, It's still really rough though, during this whole “walk down memory-lane” there has been plenty of tears. kind of feel like I have to do it now before it's all gone.
Like me he was a pretty big internet-kid So I’m assuming he had a lot of accounts on sites that I’m not even aware of, It’s pretty hard to find though —I only have a couple of usernames to go on and no one around to ask.
I have also been looking for some videos and sites that I’ve personally liked, at the moment I’m looking for the video for the song “楽日” by 宇宙人(Uchūjin), which is extra tricky seeing as I don’t know any Japanese.
While personally backing up the entire internet is unfortunately impossible God damned do I wish I had done it at least a little bit more.