This is fun, but I think the site needs a clearer distinction between “dead”, “declined”, and “still alive but culturally moved on”.
Tamagotchi is a good example: it’s no longer the late-90s phenomenon, but it’s definitely not dead.
A small status tag could help:
- shut down - zombie / technically alive - niche but active - spiritual successor exists
That would make the debates part of the site instead of just corrections in the comments.
There are a lot of things that aren't dead exactly but are certainly at some small percentage of their peak popularity. Not Internet, but I like to give rollerblading/in-line skating as example. Yes, you may see someone doing it every few months but it used to be a pretty common activity at some point in the 90s. Bowling was very big at one point. There are still alleys but when was the last time you thought of being in a bowling league.
Yeah, I was thinking about pagers. They’re still used in some limited settings, like hospitals, but there are probably entire landfills composed entirely of old beepers.
But that is probably because peak popularity was the abnormal state and these thinhs came back to their normal and warranted popularity.