i think one of the scariest things about being online in the early 00s was how prolific shockwave/flash was. when you load up...
i think one of the scariest things about being online in the early 00s was how prolific shockwave/flash was. when you load up creepypasta or whatever on youtube it has a seek bar and a duration and a comment section and shit but bro if you opened up a flash file? fucking forget it dude everything’s on the table. and then there would be those fucking archaic-ass escape room games or shit like ouverture facile where it’s just the stark barren realm of flash and zero other interface. i STILL get nightmares about “THE_FINAL.swf” which i cannot seem to find uploaded anywhere about escaping from a bedroom and having only 3 pills to take to abate anxiety, switching between night and day, and the puzzle was essentially on an ‘insanity time limit’; the longer you went without your scant 3 doses or solving the puzzle, the more the room became disjointed and disturbing, graphics becoming corrupted and flashing. like there might be darkweb nowadays but sometimes stumbling across individual websites hosted off of freeware domains like geocities or angelfire was like paddling into deep ocean and finding some kind of fucked up uncharted island. then youd run into shit like THE_FINAL or diningroom.swf/The House and be like ‘welp! that was a fun internet voyage for today. who the FUCK would make this’
EDIT: NOT TO MENTION THAT FLASH FILES COULD GIVE YOU ACTUAL MALWARE. so there was THAT fun caveat too of like…the closest a digital file could be to being legitimately cursed/haunted was that it could actually fuck up your computer for real while fucking up your psyche
rest in peace flash 1996 - 2020