Rant: the web is not biodegradable

I had a blog some years back, but I realized I wasn't blogging regularly (something about getting a divorce, then working two jobs, then getting unexpectedly promoted at one job and quitting the other, then lots and lots of work from the promotion, then eventually dating again...) TL;DR version - life happened, so I folded up the blog. Specifically, I actually shut down the blog. I removed the content, archived it, (1) and released the URL back into the wild to mingle with it's own kind.

Lately I've been watching The West Wing, which always puts me in the mood to expound in a smug and self-righteous manner about politics, life, liberty, and how decent human beings ought to behave. So I thought I'd start a new blog, to rant about issues that I want to rant about, and explore ideas that I think are worth discussing. 

When I went back to re-use my old blog URL, it wasn't available. Not a big deal, it's a decent name and I assumed it might get taken. So I started looking at other URLs that might work: like "DokTalks" (2) or "ChrisDoggett" or "Chris Rants".

I wouldn't mind if those URLs were in use by active bloggers writing about their interests, or even just re-blogs of other, better content. But Doktalks.blogspot.com has a grand total of three posts. ChrisDoggett.blogspot.com has a little more content in the form of six posts, but the last post was August 2005. And chrisrants.blogspot.com? 

Sunday, November 28, 2004
The king of pork
My first blog will be posted tommorrow, on the above stated topic 

That's it. That's the entirety of their content. And it's still there, bothered only by an annual comment-spammer probably selling porn, boner pills, and/or stock tips. ("just the tip!") 

This stuff is the internet equivalent of plastic grocery bags in landfills: it never goes away, never leaves the environment. It's actually worse than that; it's like buried building foundations of concrete and rebar; you go wandering and stub your toe over it, but you can't dig it up or get rid of it. You can't build on that ground, you can't improve on that ground, there's just an ugly stub sticking up just high enough to trip over, useless otherwise.

Services that are meant to increase access to the web (blogger, tumblr, twitter) become more and more choked by the undying remnants left abandoned by bored or busy users. It's a gruesome paradox: the longer services like these are around, the more successful they are, the less appealing they become to new users. Users want to be ThatBeerGuy or 'dok'; who wants to be ThatBeerGuy227 or Dok1976Beaverton? Names like that scream 'compromise' and 'late-adapter', and names (on-line names especially) can be a reflection of the identity we want to have, our idealized selves. No one's idealized self is a compromise with some unknown stranger who signed up eight and a half years ago, got bored, and never cleaned up after themselves.