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ElCapitanMarkla
I'm not sure I the Tamagotchi deserves a place on here.
Did anything really kill it? It was kind of just a fad in the late 90s and its still around, not as popular as its fad stages but still reasonably popular. We just got back from Japan last week, there is a newly opened "Tamagotchi Factory" shop which was packed. The kids each picked up one of the latest versions and have been playing with them every day.
prmoustache
I saw some brand new tamagotchis in the toy alley of a supermarket while looking for a gift as recently as a few weeks ago.
People may be not crazy about it as they used to but they are definitely still a thing.
mghackerlady
I can attest to them still existing, I collect them :) they're far more popular in Japan but in the states they limp along on nostalgia with re-issues of the older models and the occasional localisation of japanese ones
Waterluvian
And the concept is still alive and well. My kids each got a Bitzee for Christmas which is basically the same thing.
andypiper
Hobbycraft in the local retail park has them by the tills. Definitely still around.
elephantstripes
One question, quoting the site: https://rip.so/tamagotchi.html "Banned from: Most schools (1997-1999), some commercial flights, the Pope's car"
Pope's car?? I need a wiki to that information.
p4bl0
This is missing so much things that immediately comes to my mind (such as Voilà, Caramail, Multimania, Mygale, Radio.Blog.Club, Skyblog, Motion Twin's Flash games, etc.). I think those and many others are too local in the real world to be of any significance for a mostly US-centric history (my pov is based in France). Still, this brought up a lot of memories!
bozdemir
thnx for the feedback, will be adding them too.
chordbug
Is the text generated by AI? Are the "eulogies" by real people or AI?
a57721
The text on all pages looks very much LLM-generated, and I think all "user comments" there are fake too. (Edit: I mean "what people said" sections.)
I like the idea of the site, but not the execution.
It feels weird to read "nostalgic recollections" that pretend to be human, while in reality come from gen AI.
bozdemir
those are there for the placeholder purposes, I am currently removing and substuting them with real user feedbacks, thank you for the feedback, thank you for taking time to share it.
Scaevolus
Pangram rates it as 100% AI generated.
Heartwarming: even if you die and nobody cares, an AI can write your eulogy!
mghackerlady
There's revivals of a few of the services here. Off the top of my head, myspace has spacehey which is moderately popular. AIM and MSN messengers have revivals out there but I forget the details. Neocities certainly isn't geocities but it has a similar vibe and name. They mention winamps resurrections, and at least in the unix world we have a few players compatible with the skins (which lets be honest here, why else would you want to use winamp today). Pebble came back recently. Dial up exists as well, but is mostly relegated to the extremely rural and will probably die out when satelite internet like starlink gets more popular. And of course, homepages never died for anyone moderately interested in computers
Minidisk is technically dead, but it still occasionally gets new releases, particularly from the vaporwave/y2k scene and needlejuice (they have Lemon Demon and the Friday night Funkin' soundtrack)
andypants
This would be great if it had screenshots of each dead thing
pxoe
Maybe there can be some kinda suggestion box and a voting system for suggestions or existing things? Like an open suggestion box, where people could submit potential entries and vote on whether they belong there and are dead or not. And for existing entries, to vote on whether something is truly dead or not, like 'yep, this is dead', or 'nope, this is still alive' (some things may be less popular, but that's not them being dead/actually completely discontinued and defunct). Not necessarily for ranking or putting it together into one score, but perhaps just showing a number of how many people think either way about something
pxoe
also, 'Coming up in the graveyard' makes it sound like something's gonna arrive here like it's newly dead, like it's about to be shutdown with a deadline, when it's just anniversaries, which really should be clearer at the top of that box
bozdemir
same, added to the roadmap, thank you.
bozdemir
this is a great suggestion, added to the roadmap.
Jtarii
Missing Games for Windows Live, perhaps the worst games platform ever made, you will not be missed.
bozdemir
will be added soon.
jottinger
My thought is that this is interesting, but very narrowly scoped. I thought the list would be, um, longer. By a lot. This feels like talking about all of the deaths in pre-Enlightenment Europe and coming up with a list of seven names.
brk
Cuecat? Though I'm not sure if that ever really got big enough to warrant a spot, but it was a thing for a hot minute.
HomeRF - The wifi contender that was supposed to unify wireless networks across multiple device types.
Tivo - technically still around, but pretty much a zombie version of their former selves. (Maybe make an "I'm not dead yet!" section).
Gateway 2000 PCs -Their support line had a DJ, and they were everywhere until all of a sudden they were nowhere.
Optical Drives
Zip Drives - 100MB on a floppy! OMFG!!!11
Slashdot - Digg and Reddit's funky uncle.
zorked
Interesting Cuecat story: LibraryThing bought a massive stock of Cuecats and, 20 years later, they still sell them, repurposed to scan ISBNs from books for cataloging purposes: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/CueCat_Guide
cestith
Slashdot is still online and updating. Some of us still use optical drives from time to time (especially those of us with an existing stock of M-Disc media for long-term archiving).
Gateway was purchased by Acer, so it’s not like they just disappeared. Not any more than DEC, SBC, or Studebaker anyway. They were just absorbed.
mlok
I love the small web, and this is a nice project. But I won't remember to come back to it. It would be nice to have it pop up in my Mastodon or Lemmy (or Insta, or FB...) for each new addition.
Use the new web to bring people back to the old web :)
(Or a newsletter ? RSS ?)
Thank you for the "dark mode", like the old days. 2 annoyances though :
- the flashing bright yellow banner is painful to the eyes
- and the fonts are very small on a phone screen — although a 300x zoom "fixed" this.
specproc
I don't think the banner is painful, it just needs to be balanced by other graphical elements. It can offset by liberal use of <blink> throughout the text, or by a few tasteful gifs.
bozdemir
thank you for taking the time and giving feedback, i will fix them in no time.
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This is fun, but I think the site needs a clearer distinction between “dead”, “declined”, and “still alive but culturally moved on”.
Tamagotchi is a good example: it’s no longer the late-90s phenomenon, but it’s definitely not dead.
A small status tag could help:
- shut down - zombie / technically alive - niche but active - spiritual successor exists
That would make the debates part of the site instead of just corrections in the comments.