Abandoned worlds with gnomes in them

Bored of people who obsess over vinyl? Tired of misplaced nostalgia for cassettes? Get ready for people who want to save the CD. Rolling Stone:

Actually, that was a long time ago.

I'd forgotten about those. When CDs first came out the record bins were sized for LPs, so CDs were sold in tall thin boxes. It had the potential to be an artform, just like LP cover art, but it never happened. Anyway, that's not why the authot wants to save CDs; you'll have to read the article to find out why. It's a doomed quest. The CD was an attempt to translate the concept of an "album" to a new medium, but the internet demolished the album. There's just the single now. We're back to 78s.

In related news: A few weeks ago I wrote about a tween hang-out game; I can't remember if it was shutting down, or had a milestone anniversary, or was just the subject of a sad, ruminative piece that said goodbye to childhood. These essays will only grow in number as the internet generation ages. This week's example: a pean to Runescape. Digg:

These games spawn large, strange cultures, each with their own quirks and history. The Runescape Wiki keeps track of the game's history:

The riot turned into a mass purchase of pink gnome robes, if you're wondering how things turned out.

Like other online games with significant amount of history, this means a lot of people are growing up with shared memories about things that didn't happen. Except they did. Except they didn't.

That makes complicates the arguments for the preservation of these environments. It's kid stuff, and the older it gets, the less likely there's anyone who'll want to pay to play, let alone pay to keep it around for history's sake. See this Atlantic piece on the difficulty of saving digital cities, and lament again how much is lost. VR, when it's good, will create more many more places, and people will remember them more clearly than a family vacation they experienced as a toddler. One day the format will change and the places will go away. We might even have pictures in the sense that we have pictures of old games. It's hard to screenshot a world.

VotD Well, not the video of the day, but a video. The description says: "A Semi Truck Caught with UFO near Area 51 Stuck taking corner draws attention. Is it coincidence that this UFO sighting was seen near the infamous Area 51? With the topic of UFO MotherShips and mysterious UFO sightings in the news on a regular basis, it makes one wonder." Oh, it certainly does.