A digital archaeology project documenting the rise, fall, and cultural decay of the 90s and early 2000s.

What Happened To: Napster — Case File 004

In two years, Napster signed 80 million users, broke the music industry, and accidentally invented streaming. Sued by Metallica and shuttered in 2001, it remains a relic of a lawless digital frontier; its specific brand of chaos is now structurally impossible to replicate.

What Happened To: Toys "R" Us — Case File 003

Toys "R" Us didn't close because children stopped wanting toys. It closed because three private equity firms loaded it with $5 billion in debt, collected their fees, and walked away. The stores were just the collateral damage.

What Happened To: AIM — Case File 002

AOL Instant Messenger invented the social internet for an entire generation. It ran for twenty years. When Verizon finally shut it down in December 2017, the announcement came in a blog post that nobody read. Filed by: The What Happened To Archivist | Status: Closed — December 15, 2017 | Tags: AIM, AOL,

What Happened To: GeoCities — Case File 001

GeoCities gave millions of ordinary people their first home on the internet. In 2009, Yahoo deleted all of it — 38 million pages — on a Tuesday afternoon, without a plan, without a sale, without warning.

What Happened To: _____ — Case File 000

The internet you grew up with isn't the internet that existed first. This is where we open the cases on what came before — and what happened to it.