The Internet's Back Shelf: You're Getting Old
No, really, that's what it's called.
There are some websites that are useful. There are some websites that are pretty. And then there are websites that stare directly into your soul and say, “Congratulations, you are now approximately one million years old.”
Welcome to You’re Getting Old!, a funny yet slightly grim website that turns your date of birth into a personalized report on how much time you probably don’t have left.
TIME wrote about it back in 2014, describing it as a site that calculates detailed age-related statistics from your birthdate and shows world events from your childhood/lifetime.
The site is very much still around, providing birthday-based data visualizations with a hefty dose of nostalgia (with no AI, btw).
When I first found this site, I thought, “This should be fun!” And it is, mostly. But then I got to the part about the total number of candles that have appeared on my birthday cakes over the years, and that silly number made time feel a little more real. That’s what makes You’re Getting Old! work so well: it starts out as a goofy little diversion, then quietly hits you with the fact that, yes, the years really are piling up.
Maybe we should be eating more cake?