"How come you only want tomorrow?"

With its promise of something hard to do

©  David Bowie, Teenage Wildlife

Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)

1980

Well... I don't know when the time of death was, but I found something out yesterday: Teenage Wildlife has officially gone dark. 

No, it's not a dirty site. I've mentioned it a few times over the past two years because it's one of the first social networks I was on. And it happened to be a David Bowie site. 

For over a decade, it's one of those sites I kept going back to. I was always interacting with other users in the various fora, as well as making sure I wasn't quoting a misheard lyric on any thing I was writing (a random term paper or a post). 

Unfortunately, over the past several years, the site had lost a lot of its users. People started logging off and only returning when it suited them (myself included). TW had become a ghost town. 

I think it started when the site owner stopped updating the site. Evan was great in the beginning; he kept the lights on and the beer cold, all through the turbulent beginnings - when a handful of (the original [not me]) users were on every day. It wasn't always "db this" or "db that". There were other discussions happening as well, but it still stayed as a "place for Bowie fans". 

I got on the site in 2001, when I was in college. People had been used to each other by then, so the new kids in town had to prove themselves. I fought my way up through the ranks, and even got to talk to some of the users on AOL Instant Messenger (when that was a thing too). We all had stories and we all shared this one common interest. 

When Evan was starting to get sick, he didn't come around much. The updates were becoming sporadic. People still showed up, but things started getting buggy - links wouldn't work or people's rank wouldn't change. Even the site moderators were getting a lot of heat for things and I don't think they could keep up. 

In 2003, Bowie's health started to show quick signs of wear - he got the flu / pneumonia during A Reality Tour and had to postpone some of the winter shows. I remember this, because I had tickets for early December and had to go to the March show instead. In 2004, he had just finished performing a set and had a heart attack. Rest of tour cancelled. This drew a lot of speculation on TW and a lot of users to log on. 

Over the next few years, the numbers dwindled and the headlines on the site were all from the Heathen and Reality tours. Finally, the forum headlines changed, around 2006, but basic information on the front page stayed stagnant. I think it was around this time Evan only came on for a literal minute. By 2010, most of the links were fully broken and more people had given up. There were people who were still frequenting the site, but it was becoming full of trolls and craziness. I think original users just logged on just for the sake of seeing if anyone was still around. I know I was. By the time Dame Bowie passed away in 2016, the site had become abandoned, or close to it. 

Once the news came out about db's death, people flocked to the site. You had to jump through hoops in the fora in order to find out where people were talking about it. But the original users were there, some of the secondary users (me and people who came on around the time I did), all started talking about the last few years and how we all came back to "celebrate" Mr. Jones and how he impacted our lives. After a couple months of talk, the site went back to conserving energy. No more updates, no more Evan (by this time, I don't know his status). I think he was just keeping it alive just long enough for people to check in every couple months. 

Now, I look to the website and it's completely down for the count. It was inevitable that it wouldn't last forever. We all seem to have had grown up, and Evan finally decided to pull the plug on our play time. I don't blame him, nor do I blame any of the weirdness that happened through out the years there. It was a really cool site when it was in its hey day, but like everything and everyone, it had to have its done day. We are all lucky it lasted this long, and we all have two men to thank for that: Evan Torrie, the site owner / webmaster and David Bowie for bringing us all together. 

In essence, the band was finally altogether and the encore kicked ass. 

Cheers;