懷念伴隨我們長大的互聯網

In sixth or seventh grade， my best friend and I were obsessed with a 1）fanfiction called The Fellowship of the Banana Peel. It was pretty much what it sounds like—a reimagining of The Lord of the Rings in which the One Ring is replaced by a banana peel. We printed it out and brought it to school in one of those pocketed paper folders， reading it to each other at lunch and between classes. An ongoing bit was that bananas made Elrond sick—“The smell 2）permeates everything，” I remember him saying sadly， repeatedly， throughout the time the Fellowship was at 3）Rivendell.

It was so stupid. It made us so happy. I can’t find it anywhere.

The Internet is a great facilitator of 4）nostalgia. It remembers the things you’ve forgotten， and with just a little prompting can usually hand you the thing your mind was 5）fumbling for—where do I know that actress from， or what’s that song that goes like “a chicka-cherry cola？”Instagram observes Throwback Thursday； 6）Spotify suggests songs that were popular when you were in high school； there’s a pair of websites whose entire reason for existence is to play a 24-hour stream of old 7）Nickelodeon or 8）Cartoon Network shows from the 90s and 2000s.

But when you grow up with the Internet， inevitably some of the things you’re nostalgic for come from the Internet itself. The popular app Timehop recognizes this， showing the user photos and social media posts from the same date in past years. It’s not so much my tweets from five years ago that I want to revisit， though. It’s watching Teen Girl Squad cartoons on Homestarrunner.com huddled around a screen in the high school computer lab； playing Text Twist and Bubble Spinner in the suite of my college dorm， the cultural touchstones that were as much a part of being young， for me， as listening to Dashboard Confessional and watching The O.C. （And now you know exactly how old I am.）

Those things are still just a Google away. But other relics of Internet past have slipped beyond reach， like the tale of a young hobbit and the smelly banana peel he is fated to carry into Mordor. “The Internet is forever，” they say， but that’s not always true. Websites come and go as the fortunes of companies rise and fall.

Take Quizilla， for example. It was the original bastion of “What Kind of X Are You？” online quizzes. And while people did visit the site to find out which Disney princess they were， Quizilla also became an unlikely home for fiction， fan and otherwise. The platform was not really conducive to storytelling—stories were often serialized in that people would post new quizzes for each chapter， which were usually one question long， with the “answer” just a bubble that said“click here.” Then you’d click “Go，” and end up on a results page that might be more of the story， or might be nothing， to the best of my recollection.

I have to rely on my recollection because Quizilla doesn’t exist anymore. It was acquired by Viacom in 2006， and lived on TeenNick.com for a while， until the site was retired in October 2014， and old Quizilla profiles and quizzes were deleted.

Some of the story quizzes were very popular—in particular， I remember one called I’m a Girl...in an ALL BOYS BOARDING SCHOOL？！？！ It was exactly the kind of 9）Mary Sue-ish adventure you’d imagine； the titular girl the only available object of affection for a school stocked with heterosexual boys. But it was more silly than hot-and-heavy， like if the Amanda Bynes vehicle 10）She’s The Man had been written （without the loosely Shakespearean plot） by a teen. And in 2005， I eagerly read every installment.

Even if websites don’t disappear， they evolve. As a young 11）Francophile， in early high school I frequented the chat room on a website called Polyglot， where people from different countries helped each other learn languages. It has since been rebranded “Polyglot Club” and my old account is irretrievable.

That might be for the best—whatever I would find would be embarrassing at best， horrifying at worst. This was the rationale behind deleting my old 12）Xangas. That， and not wanting anyone I know to ever see what I thought was cool to post on the Internet when I was 14.

I think the same logic might explain the disappearance of The Fellowship of The Banana Peel. This is my （totally speculative） theory. It was on Fanfiction.net， as I recall， a website that still exists. No amount of searching has turned it up， though I did learn that apparently， if enough time goes by， The Fellowship of The Banana Peel will figure into Lord of the Rings fanfiction more than once. Whoever wrote the story probably just grew up， got embarrassed， and took it down.

It’s understandable. I am mostly glad I deleted my old blogs， but I do miss them a little. There was an un-self-consciousness to them that hasn’t existed in my writing since， a freedom of expression that can maybe only bloom in the brief window of adolescence. It might have started with The Fellowship of the Banana Peel—it wasn’t long after reading it that my friend and I started writing our own fanfiction. We weren’t worried about who would read it， or how bad it was. It just made us happy.

在讀六年級還是七年級的時候，我和最好的朋友迷上了一篇名為《香蕉皮護衛隊》的同人小說。文如其名，這是一本以《指環王》為藍本的再創造小說，只是至尊魔戒被香蕉皮所替代了。我們將其打印出來，裝在口袋大小的袖珍文件夾里，帶到學校，在午餐時間和課間相互讀給對方聽。貫穿始終的一幕是香蕉使精靈領主埃爾隆德感到不舒服——“那個味道到處彌漫”，我記得護衛隊還在瑞文戴爾的時候，他愁眉苦臉地反復說道。

這本小說很白癡。但它曾讓我們快樂不已。現在卻找不到它了。

互聯網是懷舊情愫的偉大推動者。它記得所有你忘卻了的事情，僅僅需要一點點的提示，它就可以信手拈來你苦思而不得的東西——我是從哪里認識這個女演員的，或者那首“切克—櫻桃可樂”這樣唱的歌叫什么來著？Instagram有“回憶星期四”的話題；音樂平臺“聲破天”會推薦分享你高中時期流行的歌曲；還有兩個網站專門就只是二十四小時播放20世紀90年代和21世紀初尼克國際兒童頻道或者卡通頻道的節目。

但如果你是在互聯網的陪伴下長大的，那么不可避免地，你所懷念的一些事物本身就來自互聯網。一款流行的應用程序“時光機”正是很好的例子，它幫你回憶當年今日，把過去幾年中用戶的相片和社交媒體的帖子按日期把它們放到一起。我并不是多么想重溫我五年前的推特，而是想重溫讀高中時在計算機實驗室里圍在一個電腦屏幕前在Homestarrunner網站上看的《少女幫》系列漫畫；……