8 Once Cutting-Edge Websites That Are Now Super Depressing

If your idea of nostalgia includes "horrific murder trials," behold CNN's O.J. Simpson Trial page, your one-stop shop for glitchy graphics and everything you almost certainly already know about the most famous trial of the 20th century.

CNN

CNN
That's as clear as a digital photo got in the '90s.

CNN has kindly been maintaining this page all these years, even though we have a perfectly good Wikipedia right there. They do have a wealth of information nobody else would want to host, including O.J.'s unused suicide note, a "Quicktime animation of crime scene," and a separate section for every person who so much as took O.J.'s drink order in 1994.

CNN
This was very handy for those who collected the O.J. Trial trading cards.

Now, we know what you're thinking: "Oh boy, I hope it has a primitive '90s comment section." You bet it does! No doubt we'll find it brimming with levelheaded, informed opinions.

CNN
Ah yes, that old "spousal abuse card" murdered ladies love to play.

And in the unlikely case that you're left wanting more O.J. after all this, there's also a section which includes an "astrological analysis" of the trial and "humorous" links, though most of them are dead (no pun intended).

When you think of forward-thinking leaders on the bleeding edge of hot trends, you think of Bob Dole, right? Maybe we're just thankful for a respite from fluorescent backgrounds, but the '96 Dole campaign actually had a decent-looking web presence for its time.

Dole/Kemp '96 Campaign Committee
And for this time, too, considering it loads faster than healthcare.gov.

Unfortunately, much like Dole himself, it's all looks. Sure, there are the usual links to the latest essential Dole news and information about how you can give money to this poor rich white man. But it starts to get weird when you notice that under the "Issues" banner, it only lists "K-12 Education" and "Technology and Internet." Yeah, we think we can all agree that the '96 election was hinging on the middle school vote. That might explain why one section includes a cookie recipe by "our next First Lady."

Dole/Kemp '96 Campaign Committee
The dog's site was deleted after he turned out to be a Chinese spy.

On the other hand, by far the best part is the "Dole Interactive" section, which contains all kinds of fun activities like button-making, postcards, crossword puzzles, and trivia quizzes. Sadly, most of the links are dead, so it's up to us to imagine how you were supposed to make a button on a website. (Did they mail it to you? Did the computer itself spit it out from that mysterious tray thingy whose purpose no one remembers?) The only working link is the wallpaper selection, which boasts a dazzling array of Tiger-Beat-style portraits of your favorite Dole campaign characters to decorate your computer screen ... but only in tiled format, because the 128-pixel squares probably took up half your hard drive. Collect them all!

Dole/Kemp '96 Campaign Committee
Right-click, "set as wallpaper." You're welcome.

And what a wonderful assortment, indeed! Since nobody had a clue why people would go to a movie's website yet, they threw in whatever they had lying around. Scroll from side to side (people hadn't quite mastered the whole "easy navigation" thing) and you'll find clips, photos, wallpaper, costume designs, and even a downloadable "dress up" game.

Warner Bros. Pictures
Before you ask: Yes, it still works on Windows 10.

Those who came to download the hefty 8 MB trailer could spend the resulting four hours exploring the surprising amount of depth included in the website -- such as an entire sub-website devoted to the villain, for some reason. No other character gets one. You also get bizarre exhortations to download the "new Netscape Communicator 4.6" (aww!) and even make your very own Wild Wild West homepage. So you're welcome, everyone who has that now -- i.e. everyone reading this article.

These days, if you want to prove you're a fan of a TV show, it's as easy as registering "fuckyeahNBCnightlynews.tumblr.com," picking a pre-made theme, and tumblring away. Back in the '90s, you had to suffer for your fansite, dammit. Which might explain why so many of the people who created these HTML monstrosities are unwilling to delete them so long after the shows themselves sank into irrelevancy. That's left the Internet clogged with tragic relics like the Way Cool Clarissa Explains It All Website, which is its actual name and not us being sarcastic pricks. (WARNING: If you click that link, the show's theme song will play automatically and get stuck in your head for the rest of your life.)

The Way Cool Clarissa Explains It All Website
So maybe Tumblr blogs aren't so different from Tripod sites after all.

The website boasts adorably old-fashioned features like eye-burning neon backgrounds and a guestbook, which "is closely monitored and under NO circumstances will inappropriate entries be allowed." Here's the sixth entry on said guestbook, by the way:

The Way Cool Clarissa Explains It All Website
Way to make us look like creeps in front of the '90s, Chiane.

But the saddest part is the enthusiastic promise of forthcoming updates that "will be worth waiting for" ... signed on May 14th, 2003. What happened, Way Cool Clarissa Webmaster? Did life get in the way? Please drop us a line to let us know that you're not being held captive in the Geocities headquarters.

Another heartbreaking project from the early Internet is the campaign to bring back Strange Luck, a FOX show that aired for five months between 1995 and 1996. As of this writing, the world continues not giving a shit about it, so we assume they were unsuccessful.

The Unofficial Strange Luck Home Page
By "nation," they mean "a fucking house with four people and a flag."

However, the successful projects are perhaps even more unsettling. For example, a troop of brave men and women devoted over 10 years of their lives to InsideTheX, which hosts transcripts of X-Files episodes. Well, that doesn't sound so wei--

InsideTheX
All transcripts start with "(Mulder has a boner throughout the episode, never acknowledged.)"

Oh, that type of transcript. Someone sat in front of their keyboard and wrote down everything that happens in every single X-Files episode ever. And we mean every single one:

InsideTheX
And yes, before none of you ask, they did every The Lone Gunmen episode too.

After welcoming you in the most grandiose fashion to your fantastic voyage of mostly porn, the page takes you by the hand and explains what a hyperlink is, instructing you to "just single-click on any blue or purple word or phrase." To be fair, even today's users could stand to take a remedial course on hyperlinks, as many of our readers appear to be under the impression that we make some of the words blue 'cause it's pretty.

Mosaic Communications Corporation
"But it's not blue, it's purple! DEMON SPAWN!" *drowns computer in holy water*

Once you've wrapped your mind around the concept of links, taken the guided tour, and pored over the Netscape Handbook, the home page announces that you're ready to explore the Internet! Which was apparently still small enough that you could find anything you needed from the Netscape home page. Its most recent news item, from October 1994, includes the exciting development that "The Department of Entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign now has a Web page." Finally. But the weirdest part is the "What's Cool!" page. Among reports of strawberry Pop Tart blowtorches and live feeds of British coffee machines is an entry for the Chernobyl disaster, which says:

Mosaic Communications Corporation
"Hitler killed 11 million people. It was a bummer. Check out the pix."

Jesus, Netscape. We're a comedy website, and not even we talk about nuclear accidents so insensitively. We're just glad the site wasn't active in 2001.

Beneath that is section asking if "You Know Jesus As Your Savior?" but we'll assume you do and move on. By the way, if Rev. Billy Dee's name sounds familiar, then you must be a film connoisseur, because the good reverend/webmaster/patriot also directed and starred in a "comedy" (quotes in the original) film called Billy And Bobby The Whacky Duo On Vacation, through his American Moral Films production company. It features a minor character from the Ernest movies as Dee's co-star, and that seems to be where all the budget went.

The 75 cents needed to make that whacky bread sandwich came straight out of Billy's salary.

But back to the site: After briefly returning to a list of various Ernest-related items the unwitting visitor might enjoy, it dives irretrievably down the rabbit hole, advertising an eBook of an "amazing personal account" of a near-death experience that -- this is not a joke -- just happened to occur to Mr. Dee under the influence of a powerful sedative. This is followed by an unbridled rant that begins with "We desperately need to see this country return to the founding principles of faith in God, the Christian/Judaeo [sic] God that our country was founded upon" and only gets more caps-locky from there. And then, immediately after that: the fan art section!

The Official Jim Varney Tribute & Fan Site
No! No! Go back to the ranting, please!

If you click on the "New Patriot's Section," however, you'll be disappointed and/or relieved to find that it's under construction. But fear not: This website has been updated as recently as this year. Sorry, we meant "fear all the fear."

Here in the thoroughly jaded future, it's easy to forget that Phantom Menace was the most hotly anticipated movie basically ever. We hadn't had a Star Wars movie in 16 years, and it still meant swashbuckling pilot heroes and badass, whine-free villains. People were so amped that when the studio held limited-release advanced screenings of the trailer, they drove for hours to see it, and this was at a time when advanced trailer screenings weren't even a thing. Soon, people were buying up tickets for movie showings where the trailer was playing, including The Waterboy and Meet Joe Black, only to leave after they saw it and then come back to see it again after the movie was over. How much of Adam Sandler's mansion was built on Jar Jar's back, do you think?

To the fans and critics who sold their souls to Brad Pitt for a glimpse at some podracing, it was well worth it. "Unbelievable," one fan was quoted as saying. "I consider myself a harsh critic, but after the trailer I was applauding." Probably the most heartbreaking quote comes from this guy:

New York Times
The trauma was so big, he hasn't updated his website since.

You know what? Forget the suicide cult. These poor, poor souls never saw what was coming. Anyway, back to getting pumped for Episode VII, everyone! Woo!

Manna totally had a stupid Angelfire page in the '90s, but now she tweets her terrible ideas like a grown-up.

Not surprisingly, the Internet is home to lots of depressing shit. See what we mean in The 6 Most Depressing IMDb Pages and What 5 Internet Celebrities Did After They Got Famous.

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