If you could access your ancient, deleted posts and pictures...

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

A few years ago, Fotolog.com surprised the world by announcing that they'd allow anyone who ever had an account in there to access their long-deleted profiles (service had been discontinued ages ago), allowing people to see and retrieve pictures they had uploaded in the mid-aughts and hadn't seen since.

Naturally, this led to a sort of virtual gold rush and was a VERY big deal... For about a week, then everyone promptly forgot about it (and I'm not even sure that those long-lost, unearthed, irreplaceable photos were even backed up by their owners after the fact).

This got me thinking.

Being able to see my lost posts and pictures among the many defunct sites I had used since getting online for the first time sounds like it'd be a complete blessing for me, yet I'm not sure what I'd do with that after the fact -- would I back it all up to hell and back? Bookmark the page and then add it to the --endless-- "will read later" list? Would I even really care now that that part of my life is firmly over?

I actually don't know.

What about you?

 

[waterxwraith]

Nearly every image of my early teen scene/emo phase has been completely wiped from the internet, I'd love to have just a few back to show my spouse how dumb I used to look lol. I think about this a lot.

 

[Bakuma1997]

All the reviews and Memes i uploaded to Frente Vermina, a forum i was part until it collapsed by poor administration

 

[SliperyHippo]

Nearly every image of my early teen scene/emo phase has been completely wiped from the internet, I'd love to have just a few back to show my spouse how dumb I used to look lol. I think about this a lot.

I think you mean how cool you used to look

 

[bjork]

I've kept everything along the way, so I have it all. It isn't something I look at often, but it comes in handy on the rare occasion I'm telling a story and need visual reference.

 

[Zerpina]

If I had access to everything I had ever posted prior to here, I would, in fact, save it.
Like @waterxwraith said, a LOT, and I mean a lot of things I have posted are long gone due to now-defunct sites, blog posts, etc. Not photos of myself, but things I had created and posted on forums and sub-forums that have been gone since the mid-90s.

People I knew online who had passed away sent me photos that I would "save later," but I either never got around to it or lost them due to spinning hard drives dying out of the blue. So yes, I would back up stuff on an SSD and burn it to multiple Blu-rays just for preservation.

There were a few photos I hosted on a private image hosting site, kind of like a digital bank for images, which is now long dead. I had stored some pictures of my grandparents there. The original photos have been lost due to a fire, and digitally they are lost somewhere on some HDD that has either long since been destroyed or is in a server, sitting powered down for well over a decade now slowly degrading over time if not already completely dead.

You have to remember, I have been on the net longer than some people here have been alive, Like most of you have. Since right at the beginning of the '90s. So, I have posted a lot of stuff.