Heartbreaking news—one of the most beloved websites on the internet, the untouched, never-updated time capsule of the internet’s first golden age, spacejam.com, has been replaced.
Now, when you type ‘spacejam.com’ into your browser, no longer are you greeted by that beautiful solar system all revolving around the Space Jam sun, featuring Lunar Tunes, Planet B-Ball, Jam Central, Junior Jam, and Stellar Souvenirs.
Instead, the logo for the new Space Jam sequel starring Lebron James and Bugs Bunny, Space Jam: A New Legacy, opening July 15 in the UAE and Saudi Arabia and July 16 across the world, appears.
The options are also much less fun. Privacy Policy? Terms of Use? Parental Guide? Where are the space puns. This is frankly unacceptable. Sure, you can click the top left and see video and a synopsis of the film, but there are no souvenirs, let alone stellar ones.
The original website, launched in 1996, became a viral phenomenon in the early 2010s, as an internet that had evolved far past the 56k dial up modem found the site completely untouched from what it had once been.
In an online world in which it often seems nothing is preserved, visiting the website felt genuinely like discovering the Tomb of Tutankhamun.
There is a silver lining of sorts. If you go to spacejam.com and click the logo in the top right, it loads the original website, under the new url spacejam.com/1996, and while it is nice that they went through the effort of saving it, having it no longer inhabit spacejam.com on its own feels like a true loss.
“It’s just not the same,” says Patrick Kelly, a regular visitor of the spacejam.com original website, tells Esquire Middle East. “When I go to spacejam.com, I expect to travel through a gateway to a simpler time. It’s now a cruel reminder that nothing is forever.”
Space Jam: A New Legacy is in theaters and on HBO Max on July 16
