Earlier today, while poking around on the WordPress Dashboard, I realized I hadn’t updated my WordPress bio or profile picture in well over a decade. It just wasn’t something I often think about when using the site, and I had let it fall by the wayside as there was a long period of time where I only used my blog irregularly and I frequently had made my posts private anyway. I knew about the outdated avatar of course since I could see it, and which I hadn’t yet changed mostly out of laziness. I had, however, forgotten about the cringey bio that had not aged well since 2014-15, or whenever it was that I’d last updated it. I updated both and went about my day.

As the day wore on though, that realization had gotten me thinking. There are places on the internet that have been abandoned slowly (or quickly) over the years, places where you maybe didn’t so much consciously leave but you just stopped using as much or as often, until one day you never went back. Depending on your age, the list of these kinds of places could be quite long. How many of us took the time to, for example, delete the content of our MySpace profiles or to delete our accounts before we stopped using them? What about LiveJournal? Or countless other temporary spaces we’ve occupied throughout our time on the internet?

These abandoned profiles, accounts, and interactions are like ghosts, echoes of a version of ourselves frozen at the time we each stop using the site or service in question. For example, back in 2015 it would still be another 3+ years before JK Rowling’s raging transphobia would begin to be made public knowledge; as such, I had no reason at the time to think anything of the ‘Proud Hufflepuff’ among the other (again, cringey) stuff I’d written in my WordPress bio. Similarly, I’m sure there are probably thousands of abandoned accounts from various sites out there (some of my own included, I’m sure) that have lyrics or videos from musicians whom maybe the person loved at one time but whom they no longer support now for one reason or another. And probably innumerable other cringey things.

What kind of cringey ghosts have you left behind out there in the great wide world of the abandoned internet?