The Wayback Machine is a 279-billion strong (and growing) collection of preserved web pages maintained by the non-profit Internet Archive. But even that system, it turns out, has a shaky foundation. Since the internet is far too expansive and ever-changing for any one person to keep track of, we generally just don’t, instead choosing to outsource our collective memory to the fleet of helpful web-crawlers and archival services that already troll the web’s depths. Usually this is a natural occurrence, but occasionally it’s forced. Sure, that one terrible tweet you made back in 2015 will probably outlive us all in the form of screenshots, memes, and increasingly-terrible dunks, but most things online will quickly fade into the ether. The internet is forever, except when it’s not.
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