A lot of comments on here saying “but X is better”. Y’all are missing the point though. These “better technologies” are not being used in the creative and fun ways that flash was - not to the scale that we saw in peak Newgrounds/HomestarRunner era. It goes to show that no one company should ever control tools and the stuff our works are built upon. A lesson we, as a society, sure struggle to learn.

Don’t get me wrong, my rose tinted glasses aren’t all the way on. I remember critical infrastructure systems developed in flash of all fucking things.

But a very real piece of the creative internet died with flash. Maybe it’s a coincidence, and it’s the corpo-sites we all congregate around now to blame. I don’t know. Peak internet was 2000-2010 and I’ll stake my flag on that hill - don’t @ me.

Oh don’t worry, the grifters will all have cashed out and be floating away on golden parachutes long after the decades of litigation is over.