Hannah’s Homepage

Hannah’s old homepage still sits on Freenet, exactly as cute as I remembered—the kind of thing that stops you for a minute because it’s so perfectly preserved, like opening a time capsule someone forgot they buried. I found it stumbling down an internet rabbit hole, the way you do.

Hannah had this way of making a space feel like her, even with all the constraints of free hosting. The photos are what matter. Photo 8 especially. That’s Hannah.

It’s strange finding these artifacts from the early web. Everyone had a homepage back then, or wanted one, and most of them are long gone. But Hannah’s still up there, this little corner of the internet from another era. I kept thinking about leaving a message in her guestbook, the way people used to do, but it felt like disturbing something. Better to just know it’s there—proof that she existed in this space, that she mattered enough to someone that they’d visit and write something down.

That’s not how the internet works now. Everything’s algorithmic, optimized, designed to keep you scrolling. Nobody’s making little homepages anymore. Nobody’s leaving messages in guestbooks. It’s easier maybe, but something got lost.