I like looking at random websites and Neocities makes doing that easy with their ability to sort by “Random” on the browse page. Seeing what people make is very fun to me. I don’t care if it’s “bad” or gross or incomprehensible, or if the person has no experience with HTML. I’d like to showcase just a few websites I’ve come across during my searches for what’s out there. For the fun of it, I've put each website into a category.

https://f369bdfadc37d5aadc4079189db0cd2d.neocities.org/
Category: Creepy

First impression: Weird image. Are the URL and text on the site code? Looks like so. I decided to translate some of the text.

The first line on the landing page is hexadecimal.
69 74 20 77 69 6c 6c 20 72 75 6e 20 74 6f 20 67 65 74 20 79 6f 75 translates to “it will run to get you”.

I couldn’t figure out what the lines like “Hes hoou canak bod ad? ick palck! tot.” or “qoo! sqa!” meant. I assume it’s letters jumbled throughout a sentence or some kind of cipher.

I did, however, recognize one of the last lines to be Base64. When decoded, it says “hidden forgotten”.

Some of the text on the website are links. “qoo! sqa!” links to the Neocities homepage. “tals” links to a custom not found page. The word “found” on this page links to w3schools.

What does it mean? Probably nothing. It’s likely just someone messing around while learning HTML.

I’m unsure of the image’s origins, but it was used as a thumbnail for this YouTube video uploaded in 2011. It’s of two people playing Ju-On: The Grudge for the Nintendo Wii. Not surprising. Moving on.

https://freemoolah.neocities.org/
Category: Educational Humor

This site has facts about cats. I never knew some of these facts, like how there are “vampire kitties” and that they’re opposed to “lasana [sic]”. It’s important to learn something new every day, so this is a good website. The words “Website for cats + Gabi and Orin.” scroll across the page. I would have to assume Gabi and Orin are the names of our webmasters here.

It’s a nice website, but I’m still waiting for them to post the results of the Cat Olympics...

https://sporkmagic.neocities.org/
Category: Personal

It’s not the prettiest, but I like it. It “gets the job done”, as they say. My favorite part is the map with pins showing all the times the owner has had his heart broken.

He links to a couple cool websites, one of which also being a favorite of mine: Cameron’s World, an art piece by Cameron Askin. Sporkmagic has a very apparent love for music as well. I mean, he's got a last.fm account; that's pretty much as much of a music lover as you can get. And damn, that's a lot of scrobbles! I appreciate his page on Radiohead very much.

Sporkmagic has a “funky duck” page. The music is incredible. Truly life-changing. Mr. Sporkmagic, I used to know a girl you would’ve liked – but she broke my heart, too.

https://deepfartcontest.neocities.org/
Category: Art

What the fuck is this? Like, seriously, what the fuck is this? It’s a cool layout but what the fuck is this? “Deep Fart Contest”? I don’t think I will. It mentions acceptable submissions being drawings, paintings, sculpted busts, and abstract art. But like, what is it?

I love the animations across the website and the disgusting imagery. The photo accompanying the “Watch” blurb on the homepage is particularly revolting. It makes my skin crawl. Note that despite the name, there are no buttholes on the page. The photograph of a puckered mouth sure is reminiscent of it, though...

It mentions certain dates, but it doesn’t mention year. I can’t view any of the submissions as the pages don’t load properly. To see whether this was already over, I decided to see if they had their Neocities profile open. They do, and it looks like this:

So this “contest” was 2 years ago by now. I couldn’t find anything about it. They have the Neocities supporter badge. Is this the creator(s)’s main site? I am left utterly confused by this.

https://corru.observer/
Category: Game

I found this completely by chance. It’s insanely impressive. As for what it is? It’s a super stylish visual novel. Open it and try it for just a few minutes and see what you think. It’s bizarre. I especially enjoy the point-and-click aspect and the barcode motif. The UI is just as stylish as the rest of the game. The jargon used really caught my interest. I was very proud of myself for immediately guessing I was traversing a memory while doing the segment where you walk around a street as Akizetesche.

To my surprise, there’s quite a bit of fanart for the game, a fan-made wiki, and its own TVTropes page. Is this more popular than I assumed? It’s very cool.

https://heytojiko.neocities.org/
Category: Art

Oh wow. I never thought I would find this. I am almost certain I have seen this site before. If I am not mistaken, this is by an artist who used to be called "Casinos" (or "CCCasinos"?) or some variation of that. They go by the handle "nicooo" now. I wonder if they remember this site. Their style is very nice. I can see its influenced by the works of Osamu Tezuka.

I poked around a few pages before returning to the main page. Scrolling down, I saw the words "been here before? Click Here". Having been here before, I clicked and was brought to a page with different links detailing information about the site, characters, while also providing a link to a gallery. I decided to read about the site.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I've seen artists - especially niche character artists who make "adoptables" - give away or sell their lore-heavy characters. I read a little bit of the story, but honestly...it doesn't really grab me at all... There's something to be said about one of the tulpa characters telling Tojiko "you are not the same man who gave us life". Life imitates art, eh?

https://lordvantshotel.neocities.org/
Category: Creepy

I like the design. None of the links work, save for a Twitter page with 0 followers and the check-in page. Lots of references to Shaye Saint John. Unfortunately I am not familiar with the character...person?...so I can’t say much about it. I would’ve liked to have left a comment, but the guests section was a non-functioning link, too.

On the check-in page, there’s more links to other pages. Nearly all of them point to a non-existent “shayesaintjohn.net”, so they don’t work. I dig the site’s graphics and layout. It’s a shame it’s not functional.

https://futureson.neocities.org/
Category: Humor

True.

https://wolfhorrors.neocities.org/
Category: Art

This is the homepage of a person who likes to draw furries. The art style is nice, it’s not something I see everyday from the average furry. The small eyes make it look more mature.

Unfortunately, the gallery section of his site links to OneDrive folders that don’t work anymore. One link is to deviantART, but it says the account is deactivated. He does link his Twitter on his about page though, where I could peruse through his collection of art. It’s nice, but I don’t really have much to say about it besides that. Functionally it is scarely better than a carrd. While a blog is linked, it was last updated in August 2023, only having 3 posts.

I guess that’s the problem with a lot of these websites. They’re full of dead links or they’re designed in an inconvenient way. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen someone link to a file-hosting service to showcase their art. Stuff like OneDrive and Google Drive aren’t meant for hosting galleries and I promise that it shows, even when their links aren't broken. Twitter is okay for a gallery if the user doesn’t post or reply to people with a bunch of memes all the time. I much prefer someone hand-code a gallery section, but that takes time and effort to figure out. I went through many iterations of my own gallery section until I settled on what I have now, so I get it.

The site I've saved for last, though, is different.

https://iwillbewaitingforyou.neocities.org/
Category: Creepy

This was one of the more complete ones I’ve visited. It appears to be someone’s diary mourning a past love. My first thought was that this is a work of fiction, but I couldn’t help thinking of all the times where someone was acting like a psychopath online and it turned out to be legitimate. That Amazon reviewer saying how well the knives or axes they bought worked for killing, or the YouTuber who flipped a coin to decide whether they would only kill themself or their co-workers too.

"i will love you
for always
and forever
from now until the death of tthe sun
you are my one and my only"

That last bit links to a page titled “pleaselookforme”. It details how badly the author longs for whoever they’re speaking to.

"i'm not so good with computers
but i know that you'll find me regardless
i will be waiting for you
and i know that you'll reach out and take my hand when our time comes"

It sounds deeply sad and delusional. There’s a few links on this page. For once, they’re not all broken and dead. “are you sad?” links to iwillbewaitingforyou’s Gaia Online account. It turns out the image of a sad girl in a wheelchair isn’t entirely random; it’s their avatar on the game.

"those who conceal their sins do not prosper
but those who confess and renounce them find mercy

september 23 2025

i will wait for you on the beach of destiny and we will
walk hand in hand into the waves of fate
i was born for you"

For curiousity's sake, I searched up their Gaia username. I found this forum thread where they responded to the question "What does success mean to you?"

If this were anyone else, I wouldn't be taking the usage of the word "walk" at the end so literally. You'll see why I have the feeling it is literal.

Going back to the “pleaselookforme” page, the word “laugh” goes to a page with a bunch of memes. Did the author and their love laugh at these images together? They're very similar to stuff people tend to send each other on Discord.

The poem on the right directs to a page titled “diary”. From this, we can read that the author is wheelchair-bound. They mention eating bamboo salt. A quick Google search shows it’s occasionally used as medicine, especially in Korean culture. I couldn’t find a good source for this information, however. From the way they talk about it, they're eating this salt to gain the ability to walk again.

The author talks a lot about how their love smoked. Fitting that when you click, smoke rises from your cursor.

"and we don't have to live for very long
there's just a little bit more than two years left until we drift away
and then we'll have eternity
and eternity minus five hours and fifty two minutes
is still eternity"

I can only assume from all this that the author – or main character, if it’s fictional - plans to kill themself by September 23, 2025. My initial assumption was that this lover broke up with them, but after reading more, I am not so sure. There's an implication they killed themself already. I'll just spoil it for you now: this is an ARG. It's tagged as such on the site's profile.

There’s still more to find on this diary page. The lines of red text each link to further diary entries. They’re...odd, though, because while I feel they’re written by the main character, they seem to be written from the perspective of their obsession. I’d give a run-down of it all, but honestly, you should just read it all yourself. It is far from poorly written. It's deranged.

While it calls itself an ARG, I am not sure what the "game" aspect is. The site profile comments are open but those don't appear to be for anything but the creator's personal comments and updates. Perhaps you're meant to interact with the "Reika Ruysch" account. I've never used Gaia Online before, though, so I have no idea how it works.

By far, this was the most interesting of the sites I visited. No dead links, no errors, no 404 not founds; just a piece of art in the form of a website. My only gripe is the pages aren't very responsive and don't always look right at certain resolutions. I wonder what will happen come September 23, 2025...

Even if a lot of the websites were in pieces, or confusing, or had practically no content, I enjoyed looking through all of them anyway. The ability to sort by random allows people to find online spaces that truly would be hidden and forgotten otherwise. Who knows what any of these people are doing right now, at this moment. Maybe they've forgotten about these sites. The first one I listed hasn't been updated in 3 years. iwillbewaitingforyou was updated just two months ago.

Edit 6/23/2025: Within the past month, the creator of iwillbewaitingforyou has been active again after around a year of silence.

If you have a website that's unfinished or you want to make a site but haven't yet, please, make it! You never know who will find it and feel the need to tell others about it. Everything you do isn't inherently just lost to the void. I love finding these places tucked into the far corners of the internet. Not all websites are created equal, but that's the fun of it. Perhaps next time we can explore more websites together. Ciao~