懷念伴隨 我們長大的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)

In sixth or seventh grade， my best friend and I were obsessed with a 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 permeates everything，” I remember him saying sadly， repeatedly， throughout the time the Fellowship was at Rivendell.

It was so stupid. It made us so happy. I cant find it anywhere.

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

But when you grow up with the Internet， inevitably some of the things youre 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. Its not so much my tweets from five years ago that I want to revisit， though. Its 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 thats 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 youd 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 doesnt 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 Im a Girl…in an ALL BOYS BOARDING SCHOOL？??？！ It was exactly the kind of Mary Sue-ish adventure youd 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 Shes The Man had been written （without the loosely Shakespearean plot） by a teen. And in 2005， I eagerly read every installment.

Even if websites dont disappear， they evolve. As a young 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 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.

Its 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 hasnt 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 wasnt long after reading it that my friend and I started writing our own fanfiction. We werent 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(wèi)隊》的同人小說。文如其名，這是一本以《指環(huán)王》為藍本的再創(chuàng)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(xué)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(lǐng)主埃爾隆德感到不舒服——“那個味道到處彌漫”，我記得護衛(wèi)隊還在瑞文戴爾的時候，他愁眉苦臉地反復(fù)說道。

這本小說很白癡。但它曾讓我們快樂不已。現(xiàn)在卻找不到它了。

互聯(lián)網(wǎng)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(wǎng)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(jié)目。

但如果你是在互聯(lián)網(wǎng)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(lián)網(wǎng)。一款流行的應(yīng)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(wǎng)站上看的《少女幫》系列漫畫;還有和大學(xué)室友在宿舍一起玩“瘋狂拼寫”和“旋轉(zhuǎn)泡泡龍”游戲;對我來說，年輕人的文化標準是聽過多少首“懺悔的儀表盤”樂隊的歌和看過多少集電視連續(xù)劇《橘子郡男孩》。（現(xiàn)在你們都知道我的年齡了吧？）

這些事物其實在谷歌上搜索一下就找得到。但是互聯(lián)網(wǎng)過去的其他歷史遺跡卻已遙不可及，就像那個講述了年輕的霍比特人和命中注定由他送到魔多的那塊臭香蕉皮的故事一般。“互聯(lián)網(wǎng)是永恒的，”他們這樣說道，但事實卻并非總是如此。網(wǎng)站總是隨著企業(yè)的興衰而存在或者消失。

以社交網(wǎng)站“Quizilla”為例。它是在線測試“你是什么類型的X”的原型。為了知道自己是哪位迪斯尼公主，人們就真的訪問了這個網(wǎng)站，“Quizilla”還神奇地成為了小說和粉絲的聚集地。這個平臺實際上并不利于用來講故事——故事往往被系列化，每一個章節(jié)都帶有新的測試，這些測試常常只是一個問題，必須通過點擊標著“點擊這里”的按鈕才可以獲得答案。據(jù)我記憶所及，點擊“前往”之后就可以到達下一頁面，看到的或許是后續(xù)情節(jié)，或者什么都沒有。

我必須依賴于記憶，因為“Quizilla”網(wǎng)站已經(jīng)不存在了。它于2006年被維亞康姆收購，依賴于網(wǎng)站“少年尼克”存活了一段時間，直到2014年10月份網(wǎng)站關(guān)閉，“Quizilla”過去的用戶資料和測試都被刪除了。

有一些測驗內(nèi)容非常受歡迎，我尤其記得一篇叫《我是一所男寄宿學(xué)校里唯一的女生？！？！》的故事，正是你所想象中的瑪麗蘇自戀喜?。涸谝粋€全是異性男生的學(xué)校，這個女孩是唯一的情感對象。與其說是熱辣激情還不如說是傻，想想要是阿曼達·拜恩斯主演的電影《足球尤物》如果由一個青少年執(zhí)筆（沒有了與莎士比亞喜劇相似的情節(jié)）會是什么樣子。而在2005年，我急切地閱讀了那篇測試的每一個章節(jié)。

即使網(wǎng)站還在，它們也會不斷變化。作為一個熱愛法語的年輕人，早在高中時期，我就時常進出一個叫做“多語網(wǎng)”的網(wǎng)站，來自各國的人們在網(wǎng)站上互相幫助學(xué)習(xí)語言?，F(xiàn)在網(wǎng)站已經(jīng)更名為“多語俱樂部”，我的賬號也失效了。

這可能是最好的結(jié)局——無論我發(fā)現(xiàn)什么，充其量不過是令人尷尬的東西，甚至可能令人厭惡。這也是我刪除了舊博客的根本原因。我不想要讓任何認識我的人看到我在14歲時認為很酷并把它發(fā)布到網(wǎng)上去的東西。

我認為同樣的邏輯可以用于解釋《香蕉皮護衛(wèi)隊》的消失。這完全只是我的推測。我記得這篇小說是載于同人小說網(wǎng)上的，現(xiàn)在這個網(wǎng)站仍然存在，但再怎么搜索也找不到了。我明白，如果有足夠的時間，《香蕉皮護衛(wèi)隊》無疑會被列入《指環(huán)王》同人小說系列中。寫這篇故事的人或許長大了，覺得難為情，便把小說刪掉了。

這是可以理解的。我很高興刪掉了以前的博客，但是我確實有點懷念。在我之后的寫作中，再也沒有以前博文里的那種率真，暢所欲言這朵花兒，也許只在短暫的青春窗口里盛開?；蛟S就是從《香蕉皮護衛(wèi)隊》開始——讀了這本小說之后，我和我朋友便開始寫我們自己的同人小說。我們并不擔心誰會去看，或者是寫得有多爛。我們只是樂此不疲。