Keep Circulating the Tapes/Web Original

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


The bad thing about the Internet is that, technically, everything on it exists in only one copy. Once the person who's hosting the content stops doing so... it's off to the Internet Archive in vain hope!

  • Who would've ever thought Geocities would go down? How many thousands of sites were lost? Granted, most of them sucked, but still!
  • When Sci-Fi changed its name to Syfy, the url changed as well. The "Sci-Fi Wire" news website went to its own domain, but lots of old stuff were lost.
  • Any site, once deleted, is pretty much gone forever. Luckily, the Wayback Machine makes it possible to find at least some of those sites. Among the 150 billion pages saved since 1996, there's got to be a lot of information impossible to find anywhere else, like this fascinating account of an expedition to Kowloon Walled City before its demolition.
    • Every single internet content made before the Internet Archive.
  • Xoom, a popular domain that existed between 1996 and 2001.
  • The first season of Loading Ready Run contained some copyright music. However, since it was made prior to the existence of YouTube, the internet was a lot less strict at the time and they were even able to sell DVDs of it. Now they can't even upload most of the videos to their own site. There is, however, one season one DVD being shared around the UK, and there's a list to request it for a week on their forums. The creators ask that nobody copies it or creates a torrent of it, and so far people have upheld that request, making this the only way to view all of the first season. Many of the videos are also available via the aforementioned archival site, but special features and bonus videos are only available through DVD sharing.
  • The regular and "Hyperspace" paid content on the official Star Wars website. Created in 2003, Hyperspace was the only way to get exclusive — really exclusive — content like video diaries, insider information on the prequels, an unfinished workprint scene from Attack of the Clones, concept art, exclusive commentaries for the original films, and more. However, when the site switched over to a new redesign, all of that content wasn't converted into the site's new Flash format and subsequently vanished into the ether. Short of getting said exclusive content from unofficial fan preservations, there's currently no official way to obtain any of this material. Most of the open content is lost as well. The SW official forums were also closed on June 6, 2011, just after the announcement of the "Complete Saga" Blu-Ray boxset. Given how much information (and interviews with notable Lucasfilm authors and guests) was available on that forum (more than 10 years of it), screenshots of topics and forum posts continue to circulate amongst diehard fans.
    • While we're on the topic, there have been several official Star Wars documentaries and TV specials that haven't seen the light of day for more than 20 years. They include a documentary directed by Michel Parbot on the making of The Empire Strikes Back (which may have aired on Swedish television in the early 80's), the UK television special Clapperboard: The Empire Strikes Back and From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga. While some previously-unreleased older documentaries have been included on the upcoming "Complete Saga" boxset, many of them are still unaccounted for, and can only be obtained through torrents and fan preservations.
  • Similar to Geocities, the sudden shut down of IPB Free caused thousands of forums to be lost forever. There was a lot of anger from all parties involved in the following weeks.
  • The only way anything from image sharing site Fotopic will have survived is if a user saved any images from it for their own worth, otherwise all 8 years of the site history has vanished into the ether after it went into administration. The Wayback Machine is unable to archive anything from it too, and many of the users had their sole copies of their images on the site. It's a pretty big deal.
  • Any page on TV Tropes that enters The Permanent Red Link Club or gets an Example Sectionectomy. Even if there were loads of interesting and witty bits, all it takes is one controversial entry and the whole lot goes, never to be saved, never to be seen again. Your only hope is to keep vigil on the forums in hopes of backing up the deleted/castrated pages before they vanish from all records.
    • The entire Title Bin was silently deleted. That's a lot of content. All gone forever. How many people approved that?!
      • Fortunately the Title Bin was rescued and is now resurrected here on All The Tropes, along with as much of the Permanent Red Link Club and excised examples we could rescue. And we've made sure the Archive is saving our content.
  • Whilst there were some good reasons for Girlvinyl shutting down Encyclopedia Dramatica and replacing it with Oh Internet, it still represented a MASSIVE loss of recorded internet culture and e-drama. If you could scrape away the Dead Baby Comedy you would find a veritable trove of uncensored, documented truth on a variety of matters, pleasant or not. Fortunately, several restoration projects sprang up immediately but were somewhat crippled by the fact that the old ED admins weren't going to release the archive, despite not using any of it for OI, resulting in a loss of a LOT of images and text that are hard, if not impossible, to find elsewhere. Some have compared it to burning down the Library of Congress, which, content aside, is a surprisingly accurate analogy.
  • The First Media Works versions of Bauer Media's Big City Network sites (Key 103, Hallam FM, Viking FM, TFM, Metro-Radio, Rock FM) and Global G Cap Media/Orion Media's radio station sites (Heart/Trent FM/Red Dragon FM etc.), all of which are at http://SHORTENEDSITENAME.fimc.net [dead link] (example URL). Only First Media Works has the copies, and they're hard to obtain.
    • As with the Encyclopedia Dramatica article above, it's pretty much the same situation.
    • Taking it back one stage further, the versions of Bauer Media's Big City network website platform used between August 2001 to May 2005, which was critically acclaimed, and is still popular. Getting a copy is... well, let's just say, not easy.
  • After YouTube closed down the account of infamous game commentator Kolibiri, his hundreds of videos vanished up completely. Several users have already reuploaded a huge chunk of his videos, but it still seems that a few dozen are still missing.
  • The first Death Note Abridged by TioH and Dargonakis, made in the days when "abridging community" wasn't a term and Little Kuriboh still had his original account. The concept of this series was mainly the same as the original manga and anime...except that Light was notably...less intelligent, although considering that everybody else was also dumbed down, that really didn't increase his chances of getting caught. It was not only cancelled, but the videos were removed. The only remains are the first two episodes uploaded by a fan and a two-part "Best Of" compilation, also made by a fan.
  • Most of the online featurettes and extra content that promoted Batman Begins and The Dark Knight haven't been released on any official DVD set. This includes TV spots, trailers, making-of videos (which focused on the creation of the clown masks and a retrospective of the first film) from the Comcast website, tie-in television specials (that had exclusive interviews and deleted footage), the "Interactive Batcave" videos to promote the first film from IGN, the first viral marketing clip from The Dark Knight (which had the character Rachel Dawes talking about Harvey Dent at a press conference), and much more.
  • From That Guy With The Glasses:
    • A video by Doug Walker were he dresses up as Osama Bin Laden.
      • "Go Cubs Go". A video were Doug, Rob and Mike get depressed over the Chicago Cubs losing and trying to commit suicide, ending with the gun shooting the camera.
    • A video by That Dude in the Suede that ranted against Youtube's takedowns of The Nostalgia Critic episodes which caught the interest of Doug Walker and in turn was responsible for That Guy With The Glasses/Channel Awesome becoming a showcase for more contributors other than Walker is lost and gone forever. The reason? Suede said he'd delete the video when the dispute between Walker and YouTube had run its course and Suede had saved the video on a now long-gone college computer.
      • The first version of Neon Genesis Evangelion in 5 seconds. Will deleted it from his channel because he thought it was way too long.
      • The first version of the first episode of Suede Played, wich was shot in his parents' house, instead of his new one, it also was a normal Let's Play, instead of the second version. It was accidentally uploaded to his YouTube account, and near instantly it was put on private. Thankfully someone mirrored it.
    • The Spoony One's old film riffs. They were removed from his site in 2008 and he doesn't plan in releasing then again.
      • His Mashable Awards 2009 Acceptance Video. It was removed from his site and blip.tv hours after it was released due to Fan Dumb calling his then girlfriend Scarlet names such as "fat ginger pig".
      • The first three sessions of Spoony's Dungeons & Dragons Campaign. They were not recorded by LordKaT and we only have RolloT's recap of them.
    • The first "Benzaie versus Handsome Tom" match, the Street Fighter IV Challenge, were the game glitched and Tom won. It was originally posted on Daniel "That Aussie Guy" Rizzo's blip.tv account, wich was taken down after he left the site in August of 2009. The only remains of the match are two black and white clips on Ben's revenge video.
      • Benzaie's recorded livestreams on his original USTREAM account, wich was closed due to Ben violating Terms of Service.
    • Every single video made by Daniel "That Aussie Guy" Rizzo for That Guy With The Glasses (except Ask That Aussie Guy and Trailer Trash). While he did upload them to his YouTube account, they are on private mode and his original blip.tv account and his Bored Shitless account were deleted when blip.tv's site got redesigned.
    • Bennett the Sage's Elfen Lied: The Abridged Series. The first 11 episodes were taken down of YouTube and Episode 12 was never released.
    • Out of the 7 videos that That Chick With The Goggles made for the site, only 3 were released on her YouTube account and her blip.tv account was deleted.
    • The second episode of Thanks for the Feedback! (also the first to be shot, supposed to be the last episode and the one who inspired the series), White Rapping, also known by its more popular names, Rape Rap and Rapping About Rape. It was taken down from the site and blip.tv, not because of its nature, because it was the original edit that Lindsay put up on the File Transfer Protocol, told admin not to release it and it ended up on the site due to miscommunication and misunderstanding. It's only available through a mirror.
      • The Dune, yo video, wich was taken down due to Lindsay iRiff of the film with Noah being intended to replace the review.
    • Every single Mobled Queen era film made by Dark Maze Studios.
    • After Little Kuriboh's original YouTube account was taken down, there were various videos that he didn't reupload in his Card Games FTW channel and are only available through mirrors, such as the video were he proposed to his first wife, the video were he dresses up as Kaiba and his four Comment Response Videos.
      • His LiveJournal account was taken down, taking various posts that were both funny and informative.
    • Brad Jones of The Cinema Snob has a couple of things you'll never see including:
      • His first directorial effort Cancelled Sitcoms which was made in 2000 but went to being Lost Forever because this short film was shown on the iFilm website. It's also considered a Old Shame by the man himself.
      • Rusting Through Leaves: A Halloween 3 Retrospective which is quickly taken off his site due to bad audio involved. Note that it's never re-released with better audio but Brad did review the movie differently as a 80s Dan episode.
      • Also, his Grizzly II review was taken down after said (incomplete) film's producer complained, but disgruntled fans made sure it survives on YouTube.
  • The Archive Team is a group specifically created to keep circulating these metaphorical tapes when it comes to deleted web content. Its founder described it as a "league of archiving superheroes".
  • Candle Cove is a Creepypasta based on the premise of this trope.
  • The Mystery Of The ZenHex is a well known and acclaimed forum that used to allow people to post poetry and other user-created content. The site ended up morphing with My Yearbook in 2005, and then banded back off in 2007, losing some of it's content. Then, in 2011 the site completely remodeled and all of the site's 10 years worth of content was lost forever. You can view the way the site used to be on the Way Back Machine, but none of the user-created content can be located.
  • The change in format caused many games from The N and Nickelodeon sites to go away. You can get a few of them on other sites but most are scams that require you to pay.
  • Two websites that compiled Japanese game sales, The Shrine of Data (closed in 2005 due to also publishing the American NPD numbers) and Japan Game Charts (closed in 2011) - which even have the problem of not being on archive.org anymore. (it gets worse when you consider The Other Wiki uses both sites a lot as reference...)
  • Deletrius, a Live Journal community dedicated to spork bad fanfics of the Mary Sue disposition, got erased by its main maintainer around 2010, missing a lot of analysis and a part of the fandom culture of the 2000's.
  • Fandom Wank, a community created to point and mock Live Journal and fandom drama, along with a plethora of spinoffs communities, disappeared when the journal service that hosted it, JournalFen, suffered a catastrophic server failure and then failed to restore the data under a new host and domain. The wiki documenting the lingo and the most notorious cases documented in the comm also disappeared, as it was hosted in the very same crashed server. Only the Wayback Machine version of the wiki and the most notorious posts remain.
    • The first incarnation of the Spanish spin-off of Fandom Wank got lost in the ether with the disappearance of its Journal host, GreatestJournal.
  • See a "bad ID" tag on an image in Danbooru? It's been deleted from its original source, meaning Danbooru is one of the few places that it can still be found at.
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