arfo.nn.ru was a Nizhny Novgorod popular-science website about anomalous phenomena, astrology, ufology and esotericism that existed in 2003. The project bore the name ARFO, but on the home page itself it signed off differently — "Site 20-20-02"[1]. Its authors announced that they were launching a new popular-science project for researchers of the past and present, for those still tormented by a thirst for knowledge[1]. Who stood behind it, the surviving snapshots do not say: the creators speak of themselves only in the plural[1]. The project's Nizhny Novgorod affiliation is visible from the address — a third-level domain in the nn.ru zone, the home zone of Nizhny Novgorod Internet[1].

What the home page looked like

Navigation was provided not by text links but by a row of colored "micro-pictures" at the top: the page explained that these were links to featured sections and advised clicking through the pictures[1]. Below came a slogan set in capitals — about solving riddles, declassifying secrets, removing mystery and "silent exposures"[1], followed by a welcome to everyone who had dropped by the "WEB get-together"[1].

In a separate note, the home page asked the visitor to adjust their monitor: to see the site in "our" colors, one was to lower the brightness and raise the contrast[1]. There is no postal address, phone number, or visitor counter in the preserved text of the home page; the only contact is an invitation to send requests and suggestions via a link at the very bottom[1].

Thirty-six topics

The site's content was laid out as a numbered list of 36 topics — from "Topic 01" to "Topic 36"[1]. More than a dozen of them were glossaries: "Paleocontact Dictionary", "Sea Serpent Glossary", "Fortune-teller's Glossary", "Omen Glossary", "Sorcery Glossary", "Fakir's Glossary", "Incantation Glossary", "Yoga Glossary", "Spiritualist Glossary", "Spell Glossary", "Weather Glossary", "Hominoid Glossary", "Psychic's Glossary"[1]. Other sections were closer to essays: "Wonders and Pyramids", "Sly Astrology", "Alchemy Exposed", "Bruce and the Bryusov Calendar", "UFOs and the Mafia", "UFOs and Chemistry", "Movie Aliens on Screen", "500 Stories about Anomalous Phenomena", "The Ballad of Paleocontact", "Harpoons and Relics", "Chronicle of the Ends of the World", "The Wet Business of the Sea Serpent", "Magical Rus", "Astrology and Biorhythms", "Surprises from the Sky"[1].

The authors called their subject "anomalika" and considered it a new science; the topics "What is 'Anomalika'?", "Anthro-anomalika" and "Fun Anomalika" were devoted to it[1]. Two topics referred back to earlier years — "Year of the Dragon (Year 2000)" and "Year of the Snake (toward the year 2001)"[1], and the home page directly warned that most of the works had been published earlier, including in print, and many years before[1].

What the authors promised the reader

A noticeable part of the home page was devoted to explaining how the project differed from its peers in the genre. The authors insisted that they did not copy other people's materials but wrote their own, that they disagreed with many established views, and that they considered themselves participants rather than witnesses[1]. The page rejected cheap mysticism outright: "dumb, stupid mysticism is not welcome or fashionable here," as the home page put it[1]. What was posted was declared to be only an extremely small part of what had been accumulated, and most of the materials were said to be free: readers were invited to write in for reprint permission, which in many cases was promised free of charge[1].

How long it lived and how it disappeared

The Wayback Machine preserved the arfo.nn.ru home page twice: on August 2[1] and on September 29, 2003[2]. Between these two snapshots the text did not change by a single line: over nearly two months, not one new topic appeared on the home page, even though the site promised that the volume of material was growing[2]. In total there are three snapshots of the address in the web archive, the last dated October 21, 2003[3].

The site left almost no trace of recognition in the Nizhny Novgorod network. It does not appear in the surviving samples of the Counter.nn.ru counter, and no votes for it are recorded in our data. The results table of the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote contains neither the domain arfo.nn.ru nor the name ARFO[4] — though by December 2004 no snapshots of the site had appeared for over a year already.

A check made while preparing this article finds the domain arfo.nn.ru nowhere at all. Where the thirty-six topics went, and whether they got a second life at another address, the archive does not say. On the environment in which the project operated, see Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Snapshots of arfo.nn.ru in the web archive (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet vote, 2004 (archive)