A website that rots

A friend makes beats. I built him a website: a fan shrine from 2004, left online for twenty years. The longer you stay, the worse it gets.

01One number

Every second on the site counts. Every return visit adds two minutes. That sum is the depth, and the whole page reads from it.

It lives in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere.

02What the depth does

There are 20 acts in the first hour, and they stack.

At 12 minutes the pictures start losing quality. Each act re-saves them as a worse JPEG, for real, on a canvas. At 20 the construction worker in the sidebar stands up. At 30 someone is in the doorway of the only photo. At 55 the page is black except a pool of light around your cursor.

Nothing jumps at you. A picture only changes when it's off screen, the tab is hidden, or your cursor is far from it.

03The way out

A playing beat reverses everything, for as long as it plays. The clock keeps counting underneath.

The menu, the players and the forms are never touched. Hidden is fine. Broken is not.

04Skip ahead

Nobody has an hour. Pick a point. Each link opens the shrine there.

• ?min=12 The pictures start to go.
• ?min=20 The construction worker stands up.
• ?min=30 Someone is in the doorway.
• ?min=45 The banner has melted and the eyes are weeping.
• ?rot=bottom The end. There is some blood.

The codes sit in the address, so you can change them. ?min= takes any number of minutes. ?rot= takes an act, 0 to 19.

A few more switches:

• ?visits=5 You arrive as someone on their fifth visit. It says welcome back.
• ?late=1&min=12 It thinks it's 2 am where you are, and tells you to go to sleep.
• ?name=sam&min=36 It thinks you signed the guestbook as sam. There is a new entry in that name.
• ?min=30&still=1 The same act with nothing moving.

The jump codes don't save. Your real visit picks up where it left off.