In April 2020, when the global epidemic was reaching its peak, a website called "This website will self destruct" (this website will self destruct) was quietly launched.
The interface of "self destructing website" is very simple. The page name is at the top, followed by the introduction of the page (or a letter from the developer to the netizen), the buttons for reading information and posting, the shortcut for website sharing, and the sponsor of the author.
Although it is simple, this website is somewhat disturbing - in addition to the annoying slant of the entire layout, there is a constantly beating countdown behind the page title.
The countdown starts from 86400 seconds, which is exactly 24 hours. Linked with the page name, it means "this website will self destruct in XX seconds". Yes, this is a website that will self destruct in 24 hours.
Its self destruction can be saved by netizens. In the developer's profile, you can find a way to keep this page alive: "You can send me messages. If I don't receive messages within 24 hours, I will permanently self destruct and everything will be deleted from my database."
It is gratifying that nearly two years later, the countdown continues and the website is still running.
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The attraction of self destructing websites is not just its "countdown and self explosion".
Every user who enters the website does not need to register. You can anonymously post anything you want to say. These anonymous information cannot be searched, but can be seen randomly by users.
If you directly click the "Read a message" button on the web page, you can randomly swipe a message from someone else, similar to fishing for a drifting bottle. However, users can only read and cannot reply.
Since the self destructing website has been reported and spread by many media, you can now brush posts written in various languages by netizens around the world here.
You can brush the content of various topics here. In the post I wrote in the first hour, the sentence with high frequency was "He/She doesn't love me". Indeed, many people must turn this place into a tree hole to talk about the troubles of both sexes.
"I love him but he doesn't love me. This is life."
In addition, some people share their most pleasant moment.
You don't understand the happiness of the excrement shovel officer
Or try to establish some kind of connection in this anonymous "tree hole". For example, meaningless counting shows that you are not alone in posting anonymous posts.
"Please add 1 to the number of people you see"
Some Russian netizens also randomly gave their own secret recipe for dessert, that is, adding vanillin to the ingredients of the original biscuit.
And the cries of the Pirates fans:
"The pirate king is a pendant"
And some tried and true Internet jokes:
"Search this string of mysterious codes, and you will learn more"
Then the code will lead you to the end of the universe.
“Never Gonna Give You Up”
Of course, some people only hate that the website does not provide the function of uploading pictures.
"Look at my balls"
ok
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After scanning thousands of posts, I found that anxiety has almost become the most important theme in this simple web page.
The creator gave everyone a start. In the description of the webpage, the creator said, "It's been a rough few months". Since the website was published at the time when the epidemic began to spread around the world, the meaning of this sentence is self-evident.
Because of this, you can also see the impact of the epidemic on people's lives here - such as losing their jobs, being expelled from their homes, and even losing their families It has become a time capsule for people to live under the epidemic in the past two years, recording the anxiety, confusion, confusion and even anger of countless people.
"The epidemic is too bad. We have gone from subsistence to extreme poverty. When you can only barely survive, life is so difficult."
In addition to the epidemic, countless people also pour out stories that are hard to tell in their lives. For example, someone is deeply involved in the anxiety caused by the side effects of ADHD drugs. Although this anxiety makes him very uncomfortable, he can only choose to bear it silently.
Here, the various anxieties of contemporary human hearts are presented here: some people are anxious about the future, some people are anxious about not being able to face their parents for career success, some people are anxious about not being able to communicate with others, and some people are anxious about not being liked by others
It is not hard to imagine that there are still more serious mental health problems than anxiety. The website operator realized this and added a button "Feel Down?" on the homepage of the website
Click this button, there will be links to the websites of several mental health institutions in the United States, Britain and Europe (because the Internet users who use English are the most), through which you can get specific ways of psychological help.
In the anonymous virtual world, such help sounds somewhat powerless.
It is worth noting that I can hardly find the content full of grumpiness here, and it is also hard to see the tone of weirdness. On the one hand, developers block keywords themselves, and on the other hand, the function of the website itself has indeed cut off many such problems - abuse, provocation, phishing, language harassment, these behaviors become meaningless here. Even if someone brushes your posts, they can't respond to you. The fists of the sprayers can only be hit on cotton, which is really not interesting.
Hide all the true faces, so that more people are willing to take off their guard and say the truth.
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This website, which makes countless people open their hearts, comes from a netizen whose ID is FemmeAndroid.
The website was created by her in a limited time creation contest with the theme of "Keep it Alive". Femme Android took more than four hours to complete the website and released the first version. After that, she went to bed. In her own expectation, the website would not persist the next day.
"The website will really be deleted," she confessed to the media interviewed her. "If there is no information for more than 24 hours, the website will automatically start to delete the content. The time consumption depends on the size of the database. Once the deletion is completed, you can only see an error prompt on the website page."
However, after waking up, Femme Android found that its website had received more than 20 posts in the background, and the website was unexpectedly "renewed" by netizens. With more and more attention and more posts received in the background, the "end" she envisioned never came.
Not long after, after several updates and maintenance of FemmeAndroid, "This website will self destruct" attracted netizens' attention on Reddit and soon became popular.
A year later, Femme Android said that its website had received 200000 messages. According to her own statement, the countdown of the website has never been less than 30000 seconds.
Some netizens also questioned the survival of self destructing websites. Some people believed that someone must have written a bot and automatically posted on the website every few hours; Others simply doubt the authenticity of the website's selling points. You can't see who is posting, but the countdown is always reset. Maybe it will never jump to 0.
However, the fact that Internet users have posted a variety of posts proves that there are indeed many people interacting here - some people have posted someone describing their experience of "fighting a plane", while others have seen someone claiming to be the mastermind of a murder.
Such situations often appear in front of Femme Android after self destructing websites become popular. As a cross gender person, Femme Android also came to the public after her website became popular. She deleted her photos from social media to try her best to ensure that her privacy would not be revealed. However, she still saw a lot of hate minority comments against herself backstage.
Femme Android also revealed that he saw many extremely pessimistic and even suicidal posts in the background. This is why she set the "Feeling Down?" button.
Of course, there are many absurd things here. There was a popular post on Reddit that a shopping mall in a certain city in the United States would face a bomb threat - and the content of this post was obtained from a self destructing website.
Later, this post aroused the concern of local residents, and someone reported to the police. Femme Android also offered many clues to the police. Fortunately, it turned out to be a prank.
FemmeAndroid's website is still running. In 2021, it will be popular several times through several platforms. However, these fantastic, dangerous and diverse contents are still flowing into this "time capsule". I don't know which day, who will see it, or what waves will be set off again.
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The countdown device similar to the self destructing website has attracted the attention of netizens.
Reddit once conducted a social experiment similar to the self destructing website on April Fool's Day in 2015. The official set a button on the Reddit website. The button counts down from 60 seconds. Every time an account clicks, the time will be reset. Unlike self destructing websites, each Reddit account has only one click, and even if no one presses the button, nothing special will happen in 60 seconds.
Two months and four days later, the experiment ended when the countdown reached zero.
Under the influence of various internal and external reasons, self destructing websites have survived for a long time. According to the reaction of FemmeAndroid on social media, the number of posts on the website continues to rise and fall. Of course, it is not ruled out that some people actually write bots for it to maintain posts and survive. In short, the self destructing website has not completed its 80000 seconds in the past two years, and the day of self destructing has not come.
In fact, the most easily seen posts on self destructing websites are not negative emotions and pranks, but the desire of netizens not to "self destruct" the website.
"I hope you don't destroy yourself. Good luck."
"I hope you are well" is not only the blessing of netizens for the long existence of the self destructing website, but also the blessing of people who have brushed this message - I hope you are all well at the moment.
