relics of the old internet that shouldn’t have survived but did

8/28/2026 11:39:15 PM

I bet there are tons.

I saved a recipe off this site (https://www.badgerandblade.com/forum/threads/make-your-own-habanero-hot-sauce.282652/) long ago, and it's still somehow chugging along.

There must be so many weird lil' forums that are still going

[Edited on August 29, 2026 at 12:30 AM. Reason : ~]

8/29/2026 12:30:12 AM

Facebook

8/29/2026 6:30:56 AM

Facebook

8/29/2026 6:30:56 AM

Facebook

8/29/2026 7:46:43 AM

Facebook

8/29/2026 9:19:51 AM

There used to be a whole network of these crazyweb-based sites, IDK what happened to them tho

8/29/2026 10:31:41 AM

PartyInCollege and CampusBlender

The wrong format won.

8/29/2026 10:35:02 AM

The Wolf Web (TWW) started at NC State around 2000 and quickly became far more than a message board. It had user profiles, photo galleries, class and professor tools, calendars, ride sharing, textbook exchange, and other features built around real campus life. PartyInCollege (PIC) took that same CrazyWeb platform and tried to spread it nationally, eventually creating school-specific communities at roughly 100 or more colleges. In a lot of ways, TWW was already building the blueprint for a college social network years before Facebook existed.

Looking back, TWW/PIC came remarkably close to being “Facebook before Facebook.” Students had persistent online identities, pictures, classes, groups, dating and hookup features, campus communities, and online interactions that spilled directly into real-world college life. The major difference was that TWW remained centered around forums and individual campus culture, while Facebook refined the concept around profiles, relationships and a unified social graph. Zuckerberg and Facebook arrived at exactly the right moment, with better funding, rapid expansion, strong execution and more than a little luck—and aggressively turned a very similar college-networking idea into the dominant platform.

That is what makes the story such a huge “what if.” The TWW/PIC creators were sitting on many of the ingredients of Facebook several years early and even recognized that the concept could scale nationally. But PIC struggled to recreate TWW’s organic community at other schools, while Facebook caught fire and rapidly swallowed the college market. Zuckerberg ultimately became one of the richest people in the world, while the guys who were arguably building an early version of the same future at NC State never got the big-buxx payoff. In an alternate timeline where TWW/PIC had better timing, capital and execution, we might all have spent the last twenty years checking our CrazyWeb profiles instead of Facebook.

8/29/2026 10:43:07 AM

Not sure that PIC predated Facebook, though.

Certainly it did if we count TWW as the founding ancestor.

8/29/2026 10:50:58 AM

Do they still have the server logs from way back when? See if any Zucks or Winkies were visiting TWW and downloading all the CrazyWeb files

8/29/2026 12:19:40 PM

they say once something is on the internet it’s there forever but it feels like CB and PiC have been mostly forgotten

8/29/2026 12:49:21 PM

It's only there forever if you don't want it to be. Things you want or need disappear without a trace with surprising frequency. Better download and save locally and make backups.

8/29/2026 12:56:06 PM