Digital Ghost Towns: The Lost Forums of the Internet
There are corners of the internet that feel like they’re still humming somewhere in the background—quiet, pixelated rooms suspended in time. Forgotten, maybe; but never unloved.
Before the internet became a marketplace of curated perfection and algorithmic warfare, it was home to gardens of weirdness, wonder, and wild authenticity. These were spaces built by kids, teens, and the deeply online. Forums and fantasy worlds where HTML signatures glittered, friendships were forged in thread replies, and avatars stood in for our truest selves. Now, many of these spaces are gone leaving behind broken links. Others remain, but ghosted by the very people who once made them feel alive.
For me, it started with Build-A-Bearville, a vibrant little world introduced by my friend Taylor. We created avatars that looked like us or how we wanted to look. I didn’t have a real bear or the certificate needed to unlock a Cub Condo, but that didn’t stop me. There was still so much to do. I’d spend hours customizing my avatar, wandering through cheerful neighborhoods, and playing mini-games that felt like little adventures.
Then came Pixie Hollow, the Disney MMO that felt like an enchanted forest hidden behind our family desktop. My sister and I would sit side by side, wings fluttering on screen as we flew between meadows, gathered ingredients, and styled our fairy homes. It was dreamy, collaborative, and quiet. The kind of place that didn’t demand anything of you except wonder.
Later, I found Monster High. Not the franchise, but the original website—a moody, interactive place where you got a customized Monster High School Schedule, could ‘send a scream’ on your own coffin phone and your only goal was to raise your school spirit meter. It felt like a secret. A space that belonged to the misfits, the theatrical, the kids who were figuring out their own strangeness. Before the dolls lined shelves or the animated series aired, the site itself was the story, and we got to live inside it.
Some communities I only admired from afar. I missed the height of MySpace, though I longed for it like an older cousin I never got to hang out with. Its chaotic layouts, top 8 rankings, and glittery HTML templates felt like an internet fever dream. It was the golden age of personal expression, before everything got smoothed out, minimalist and monetized.
The real girls remember Barbie.com and BarbieGirls.com—where you could be Barbie in Swan Lake, dress up Polly Pocket and like the others, immerse yourself in the world. Let’s not forget LiveJournal fanfic pages where strangers wrote full epics in the comment threads, building entire universes post by post. These weren’t just websites. They were emotional coordinates. Places where we tested identity, voice, obsession, friendship.
And now? So many are gone. Or still online, but broken. Frozen. Inaccessible, especially following the abandonment of Adobe Flash at the end of 2020, You can still visit Neopets, but it’s stiff and outdated, clinging to life. Pixie Hollow was shuttered in 2013. Build-A-Bearville is gone. LiveJournal is a shadow of what it was. Monster High and its characters have been rebooted and redone so many times, it’s hard to recognize the weird little site that started it all.
I don’t think we miss the platforms so much as we miss the versions of ourselves that lived in them. Those hours after school. The thrill of logging in. The forum drama. The hand-coded profile themes. The usernames and profile pictures we chose when we thought we’d never be seen—another problem we are seeing take place with digital footprints given the new generations that have now grown up with the internet.
Back then, we weren’t just users, we were creatives. Curators of weird. Writers of fanfic. Designers of pixel art and virtual rooms. The internet wasn’t something to doom scroll on or perfect. It was something to mold and experiment with.
And maybe that’s what made those places sacred. They were messy, personal, a little bit broken. Just like us. And even if the servers are shut down, the memories remain cached—in our minds, in our language, in the way we navigate the internet now, always half-looking for that lost sense of magic.
Somewhere, maybe, your fairy is still mid-flight. Your avatar and their bear are still lounging in their condo. Your monster girl is still waiting for you to click on the next game. Not gone. Just paused.