No More Node Equivalence

Originally uploaded by crouchingbadger

He had a domain once. A profile, a page, references. Someone who was Lycosable long before the rest of the world could be Googled.

But not any more.

Now he wanders, cookies disabled. His domain now belongs to a splogger in Estonia, but then there are much worse fates for domains these days. His random bouts of nostalgia require no age check or credit card.

He stumbles upon site after site, beckoning him with promises of contact, connection, communication, life, salvation. He fights the temptation to complete the forms. Years ago, that free Audible download changed him. After listening to Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, he could no longer agree to anyone else’s terms and conditions.

Nervously, he tries his Yahoo login. It has been years since he could remember the password, but as long as he got

Invalid ID or password.
Please try again.

at least a piece of him still lived on somewhere. But now, he sees:

This ID is not yet taken.
Are you trying to register for a new account?

His last connection is now gone. He quietly moves on, his random scraps safe for the moment in a discarded shopping cart demo.