Exploring the Abandoned Internet [Vol 2] 

Abandoned websites have always had such a somber energy to them. The idea that someone devoted time to coding and sharing their website only for it to be left a ghost town always leaves you wondering what happened to the creator

The weird things about many of these abandoned sites is that they're still being hosted and supported somewhere by someone, so they're never completely abandoned

I really like empty worlds. It’s creepy but fascinating

its so surreal to hear people discuss stuff that was completely normal and comfy for me as a kid as eerie and creepy or weird or liminal, hah.

I was a beta tester for this in 1995... it's so weird hearing it referred to as a game :) No matter how many times I hear it, it's funny.

When describing signs you are a vampire it littaraly just described a person who does not go outside.

I love this series. It reminds me of how weird the internet used to be. In many ways how naive and free it was. I really miss the old internet, a lot. So much more personality in everything. So much more connection. Sure, there were problems but nothing that doesn’t still exist today. Arguably it’s worse today and harder to police without ruining things for everyone. Corporations really destroyed the freedom and creativity of the world. So much potential wiped away for profit. It’s makes me really sad to think about. I’m also happy that someone is delving into the weird and strange things from back then. I’m happy to see someone chronicling it. In an ever shrinking internet it’s actually refreshing to see.

Ahh yes, Exploring the Abandoned Internet (Vol 2), my favorite Mid-West Emo album.

I remember watching Vinesauce play Worlds YEARS ago, I was obsessed with the weird emptiness of the game and stuff like it after that. It's awesome to see someone else talking about Worlds again after like 9 years.

The vampire website intrigued me, I found a local club that seems to still be active. The meeting time and all. The location isn’t dedicated to the club, but seems to be an actual bar. I’m surprised it was on the official website. I checked the address and the bars name was rapture. I left an inquiry about everything, and whether they were even aware of being on the website or if they noticed a different clientele on the meeting day. Here’s hoping!

These videos are so strangely comforting

Back in the early 2000s a book was published. Vampire Encyclopedia. Huge book full of history, media, resources to more in-depth writing. I used to have one as I was just like these guys. Funny thing about isolating yourself because you think you’re a monster, isolation leads to you not speaking your ideas out loud and your biases grow. I had to give all that stuff up one day, stopped wearing so much black and trying to hide from people. Turns out we all share these “vampire” traits because they’re more or less human traits being scoped out through the “I’m special” filter we all seem to have when we’re younger. I used to believe. And while the idea is fun to think about, it leads nowhere but all that in-fighting between friend groups.

Video Request: If possible could you do a video on the obscure game known as "Gingiva" there aren't many videos on it but from what I understand based on the walkthroughs the game holds a very interesting story if you look past the art style. You play as a woman who has a wind up key for a head and she works in a factory until the owner sends her to jail. You befriend chattering teeth who helps you break out and fight different enemies throughout the game. The owner ends up sending a bunch of different enemies to bring you back and take you to a different facility where you get made into something that looks like Pills. The game's fighting style is similar to what is found in final fantasy, omori and undertale. You also end up befriending other creatures but they don't stay long. At some point when her original head is found you befriend a gun and the ending depends on who you pick which is the teeth or the gun. The game has two different endings but to me they don't really look that different.

Are you lost?

I stumbled across a old Sade fan website from like 92 (during their Love Deluxe era). This was around the early 00's. I was shocked that websites were that old back then. I also think the old Space Jam website still worked too.

Oh, that totally explains something from when I was a teen. Had a friend who was convinced she was a vampire who used to always say own at the slightest little nudge & would never explain why.

great video! it's nice to see more content of people actually exploring worlds as opposed to going on about how "creepy/weird/haunted" it is; it's a game that deserves a more nuanced discussion. i hope you'll do another video on some more of the custom worlds as well - you get a mix of both new and old user-generated content and it's absolutely fascinating. kinda like mini time capsules of the internet. but i'm rambling now lol - keep up the great work!

I love the flesh basement maze. kind of a banger

I like how all the traits for being a vampire are really just autism lmao

I thought I was just super generic but it turns out I might be a vampire

These worlds really are a time capsule. It's incredible how the internet has evolved since then. I'd love to know what the in-game background music originates from. Especially the slasher-like theme.

well, i started freaking out when you read through the traits of a "real vampire". guess i am count günther from today on.

I found the vampire site awhile back and it's great to hear people talk about it as well as other weird old abandonded sites

"Real vampire energy auras" Ah to be young again

Constant issues with technology and a bad habit of being awake at night? Guess I'm a vampire then. But also not a vampire at the same exact time, since it looks like Steven enjoyed using "yes, and also no" as a response. Can't help but agree with Sacrow that this dude sounded like your usual gothic LARPer. Had his own biases about what vampires are, and then saw them in himself later, while also trying to pass it off as a natural discovery and not just living a fantasy.

Another great vid sacrow, youve quickly become one of my favorite youtubers.

Pretty sure I've been to a funeral that could only be described as a "ranch style area"

I don't know about anyone.... But I am hooked to this guy's stuff man. This is literally and legitimately what I've been looking for. No bs over edited clickbait videos or anything. Just simpulll fax...... Sick video dude!❤

I played worlds for a few months with my ex in the late 00's and while mostly abandoned there was always a small club of regulars with one dude always using some creepy animal skin, I forgot what it was a deer or something. he'd also often teleport behind you while you were alone exploring worlds and barely ever spoke, usually only in riddles if he did. once a week or so you could enter a quiz with the mods and other newbies and if you won the quiz you would get gold membership for a week or two. exploring worlds was pretty awesome.

Another great video, seriously love this channel

Just found your channel thanks to the other abandoned internet video and I'm hooked. When I was a kid I played a game called Furcadia (never was a furry, but I didn't have many games and my buddy's older sis had it on their family computer and the name stuck with me long enough I ended up playing when I was 11 or 12) and for some reason I got curious and hopped back on just a few months back. Seeing places that used to be full of people, some of whom stayed friends outside of the game for lufe (One of whom I'm currently engaged to in my 30s), so empty was definitely a liminal experience. Almost made me sad tbh, even though I definitely encountered things child me never should have on there 😂

Yes! I was hoping for part 2, thank you! :)

19:20 thank you SO much!!! This happened to me when I was playing Worlds back in the 90’s. I was just a young kid at the time it scared the crap out of me! I remember I made friends with a person who had figured out how to get out of bounds, I vaguely remember that you could save specific locations as teleport points, and you could travel to other people’s positions. This happened to me when exploring outside the animal house. I’ve been describing the “rolling eye monster” for years and nobody believed me!

It's an interesting feeling being old enough to have lived through all of this stuff, visited many of the sites in their prime and then warch younger people discover the ruins of it left behind.

It'd be fun to make a fleshed out horror game from the environments of the abandoned internet.

I don't know why, but when you were talking about the sneezing website, I just felt kinda sad. There was some sort of melancholic aura around it. As if this person just kept the site because it felt comforting, but other people would ostracize them for being weirdo's... That's what I felt about it.

Games like these, with old textures and pictures, and the overall style of the game, just gives me this weird sense of nostalgia that makes me feel like I’ve played these types of games even though I never have, it’s sort of unexplainable in a way.

Very dream like, I've had dreams that literally looked like some of these images

Love your narration and absolutely love these excursions into forgotten corners of the web. There’s something weirdly comforting about these explorations-probably my nostalgia from the dozens of hours I spent by myself, exploring Halo Custom Edition maps and Gmod/Half-Life 1&2 mods and levels.

I remember playing this when I first got a computer in the late 90s. I was probably 9 or 10 years old. From what I remember, there used to be alot of people online. Definitely easier now seeing it empty.

When I was in middle school I found a book on vampires in the school library. It was a documentary type of book, with the author exploring the history of the vampire myth, the popularity of vampire fiction, and even mentioned the vampire subculture of the 80-90-00's. On this particular subject he wrote of how he took an interview from two individuals - a man and a woman - who claimed to be vampires. He described them as 20-30-something, wearing all black, and one of them (I think the woman) having floor-length hair. When he asked them if they wanted some blood to drink, they said that they'd prefer a mixture of tomato and orange juice, claiming that it was the same thing. :D

Just came across this video; knew a bit about the Worlds stuff but was pleasantly surprised by the coverage of vampirism. The vampire subculture craze actually predates the Twilight films, and had it's first peak in, I'd say, the late 90's and early 2000's, with Buffy the Vampire Slayer taking off, the popularity in goth culture, and the big resurgence in new religious movements. If I recall, the "vampire lifestyle" even received some media attention at the time, commenting on such things as the sharpening of teeth. I mostly experienced this community in a tertiary way online at the time, through my interactions with the otherkin community and research into non-human identification as well as the occult. The main conceptions I saw were the idea of vampires being human-divergent and having an energy deficiency, that required some sort of feeding process to correct, whether via blood or a psychic energy. While I am loathe to criticize or diminish others identifying in this way, given my own very idiosyncratic identity, I can see a rational, anthropological approach to the concept that would argue it is a result of cultural trends, alienation and emotional need. There is also an argument to be made for mental health as a contribution, as I know of at least one case of a self-Identifying vampire making statements that closely match those of the Cotard delusion. And of course there's the well-known Renfield syndrome. As far as is known to me, the subculture has a far diminished presence, and I can't recall the last time I met someone who identified as a vampire, despite my frequent interactions with those whom identify as otherkin and therian. The web presence seems much reduced as well, and I can't even find the major vampiric House whose website was so informative. I do believe the vampire clubs are all gone now, just as goth culture seems to have lost the prominence it once had. If you do decide to cover the topic in depth, I can recommend a few sources I have and found useful. Belanger's "Vampires: In their Own Words" is an excellent collection of both firsthand statements from members of the community and differing perspectives with critiques of it. Konstantinos' "Vampires: the Occult Truth" is more dramatic and a bit sensationalist, but also includes firsthand accounts from self-identified vampires and more coverage of the folkloric basis for vampires, as well as modern cultural and speculative instances (current as of its printing in 2010). I still find this subject fascinating, and we even have the concept of "voidpunk" now, a concept of identifying as non-human that is stated to be directly due to alienation experienced by certain minorities. All that said, I enjoyed the video and hope this finds you well. :3

if you run it in compatibility mode you can see other people that still play worlds

There's something about that sneezing website that makes me really miss the old internet. Maybe it's the bizarre innocence of it, maybe because it makes me think of an old Cracked video... Also what the hell was up with that Animal House thing?!

I didn't know about any of these, thanks!

glossed right over the Hanson room, i'm crying

That’s so weird that they made a virtual world for a frat party comedy movie so horror-ish

Okay so as weird as it is the sneezing thing probably has a fairly logical explanation, there's a number of people who, for some reason, sneeze when they get turned on because like bodies get wired funny, so it's probably one of those things where it's pretty likely that the wires get crossed really easily even if your body doesn't inherently have the reaction to sneeze when things get sexy

Instructions unclear. I think I’m a vampire now

i went onto worlds myself to see if this “cult” was true, one of the users sent me a link to i feel fantastic, thinking i’d find that super creepy or something. safe to say i closed the game not long after lol

****gasp**** I'm a "real" vampire? Oh wait, no.. almost all these traits I answered yes to, are related to my autism. Talk about one hell of a misdiagnosis. Thank goodness I don't live in Buffy land!

The best guess I have about the dead body in the Country music room is. When I was in HS my friend told me that Country music is linked to suicide as it’s the most depressing genre of music as they are always talking about a relationship ending or something similar in the lyrics.

According to their list of "vampire" traits. I'm a vampire due to my suffering of light sensitive migraines.

smartphones and smartphone culture are to blame for Internet not having evolved into a VR-chat-centric Internet

i love this series

"A store front for a band named Hanson". Someone clearly did not grow up in the late 90's lol.

The developers of this really put the "graphic" in "graphic design".

I could not take the vampire website stuff seriously

It will always amaze me that to me at the time, stuff like this wasn't scary to me, but as an adult who has experienced modern games, I can see now why one would feel that.

Happy to see Worlds actually getting love for once, instead of "CULT IN A DEAD MMO :O !!!! SCARY!!!" been a user since a whim in 2021 and wow, there's an entire storied history to every world. Somebody, be it decades ago or just last year, made the worlds that we now roam, and it's pretty cool to say the least.

I still play / explore worlds. I'm rather young, but i adore early internet aesthetic. This is like a virtual graveyard. I hope it'll never be forgotten.

There was this old website my friend and I found (around 2007 or so) where people logged their super powers and their super power names. We would put up dumb joke ones but people on it seemed like they were serious about their powers. I cant find it and cant remember what the name of the website was. You should try and find it and document it!

I explored worlds back when 4chan first discovered dit and got to see nexialist in person.

So as far as fetishes starting in childhood...um...Gargoyles the animated series *might* have contributed to my monster interest. 👀

Man, I have all those vampire traits. Definitely not a vampire though, can confirm

"A real person........or a clown"

Wow this is from the mid-90s? That's pretty impressive for the time!

The Twilight era of my teenage years was such cringe. I had to threaten my peers with physical violence sometimes to get them to stop LARPing as werewolves and vampires on a daily basis. It's one thing to pretend for fun, it's another to resort to growling and hissing because you really believe you are some night creature.

aw man, i had the worst cold up until this morning. you're telling me i could've filmed my sneezing fits and sent them to fetishists?! all the potential earnings...

As someone who meets all the vampire criteria, I can confirm that I’m just a normal person who doesn’t go outside enough.

Oh yo I had that game! It was pretty fun. Like VRChat, you can edit and create your own avatar.

I can definitely believe that mid 2000s emo kids who were obsessed with Twilight could delude themselves into thinking they were 'vampires'.

real life 2023 simulator.

I love how spooked he gets by the Animal House one because like It’s not remotely spooky if you have context at all for what Animal House is or have seen the film lmao

Im not sure what would be more creepy. Having be empty or coming across someone who never really left.

Liminal spaces will always have a draw to them, though I never related them to nostalgia or that aspect I never connected until it became a thing on the internet I read about. Empty game worlds and old websites have a feel of their own. Never cringed so hard at the vampire part. You can see how the supernatural/mythos aspect was dropped in recent decades for the "the science" explaining everything in fiction; likely these same people headcanoning their supposed vampirism into the medium.

BTW: those flesh walls should've been the wallpaper for the metal music room coupled with some Mire Lore or Thy Art is Murder playing in the background.

I don’t understand. You spend most of the time in Worlds saying you experience it as creepy because it is empty. And that it looks dated. But it’s a 30 year old game that you knew was largely empty. Was it a surprise that it was empty and creepy, and dated?

it's simple the hanson brothers is his hidden shame LUL, Great video 👍🏽

Got this game on a huge roll of Databand.

Ik this is unrelated to this video but it’s cool that your also an MCR fan I love MCR

People still make those little websites that almost no one sees - made a few myself!

Having your avatar looking like Morpheus just made it look like you're traveling through other people's dreams and nightmares...

The vampire guy is like those pirates in media that don't do anything even remotely resembling naval looting, pillaging and murder

Wtf i was asleep and woke up to this video

I forgot Vampire website existed 😭I used to be really into the whole vampire craze thing being obsessed with people like Don Henrie and other shit like that.

I would love this game if the music rooms actually played the genre of music omg the metal one is giving 🤘🏼

That music in the basement of the Animal House map sounds a lot like Tubular Bells, although it might be a bit off? It was made famous by its inclusion in The Exorcist. Also, I'm pretty sure human heart rates naturally adjust to match the person sleeping next to them.

Omg I think I was on that vampire website as a child haha wow If not that one, definitely very similar ones

Love your work, please remain as awesome as you are, a lot of RU-vidrs become wicked cringe

This is the inspiration behind VRChat - Change my mind

Seems like a good way for covert communications.

18:00 Oh hell no lmao, I had to stop the video. Also it kind of tripped me out. I inherit like 3/4ths of the vampire tropes from the website. I know it's made up but it's pretty funny.

19:17 It'd be pretty funny if this inspired Caine's design. Maybe thats unlikely, I don't know. Heheh! Thats so weird, they just put random weird stuff in. ,': D

Half way through and hoping you're finding the Blair witch world

this was made to be seen on a CRT, So you aren't seeing the walls @15:45 authentically. They were meant to be seen in a more blurred stone texture.

It's weird and really pretty sad that people now consider empty rooms and npcs welcoming you as "scary" or "unsettling" we've become so incredibly weak as a society.

you sound like blameitonjorge

I remember coming across a similar site like that Vampire one a long time ago. I took a passing interest as I always wondered the mentality behind people believing that they are a vampire. Personally I find it’s more of a fixation on a fantasy based off a feeling one might have. You don’t feel like a ‘normal’ human. There for you must be something different. You reach out to find other like minded individuals who you might feel normal around. This often will strengthen your resolve and sink into the persona. This can happen with all kinds of things but something like vampires is an easy one to point out. I think this is why the internet is such an interesting place as you can reach out beyond the physical world and talk to like minded people. Unfortunately it can also strengthen delusional behaviour Is believing you’re a vampire wrong? Well if your belief leads to actions that harms others or takes a toll on your life then yes. From my own experience though I think it’s more about finding an identity. That’s something we all can get behind! No matter what identity you find yourself in

Life gets in the way, but not so much that you can't spare $$ a year to leave it up online as part of the net, or because you're sure you'll finally get round to updating it someday. (Some people actually forget about it and apparently never check their bank statements.)