Frequently Asked Questions
Questions asked frequently, and some asked only once but very loudly.
My guestbook entry turned into crabs. Is this a bug?
No. That is the website. Every entry begins molting the moment it is posted and keeps molting until there is nothing left but crabs. This is the intended behaviour, it is not reversible, and it will also happen to this sentence.
How fast does it happen?
An entry that nobody looks at reaches full crab in 90 days. Views accelerate it: roughly 2,000 views will finish the job on their own, and the two effects add together. A popular entry carcinizes considerably faster than an ignored one.
We did not design this as a punishment for popularity. We designed it as an observation about it.
What are the stages?
Eight, named after the real larval stages of a crab, up to the point where the joke takes over.
| # | Stage | Condition |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | LARVAL | Indistinguishable from human writing. |
| 1 | ZOEA | First pinch. Something is wrong with this post. |
| 2 | MEGALOPA | Legs are forming. Meaning is optional now. |
| 3 | PINCHED | More crab than not. |
| 4 | CARAPACED | The shell has closed over the sentence. |
| 5 | DECAPOD | Ten legs. No thoughts. |
| 6 | NEAR-CRAB | Only the shape of the original remains. |
| 7 | FULL CRAB | Carcinization complete. Congratulations. |
Show me.
The same sentence, at each stage:
LARVALthis is what happens to everything you write here
ZOEAthis is what happens to everything you wr🦀te here
MEGALOPAthis i🦀 what happe🦀🦀 to everything you 🦀r🦀t🦀 here
PINCHED🦀hi🦀 🦀 w🦀at 🦀a🦀🦀e🦀🦀 to everything you 🦀 here
CARAPACED🦀 🦀 🦀🦀🦀t 🦀 to e🦀eryth🦀🦀g you 🦀 h🦀r🦀
DECAPOD🦀 🦀 🦀 🦀 to 🦀🦀e🦀y🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀 🦀ou 🦀 🦀
NEAR-CRAB🦀 🦀 🦀 🦀 t🦀 🦀 🦀 🦀 🦀
FULL CRAB🦀 🦀 🦀 🦀 🦀 🦀 🦀 🦀 🦀
Can I get my entry back?
No. There is no un-molted copy kept anywhere — the decay is computed fresh from the entry’s age every time the page loads, and the original text is the only thing stored. What you are seeing is the entry. It is simply further along than it was.
So you delete old posts.
We do not. Nothing on Crabnet is ever deleted for being old. The row stays in the database forever, the date stays on it forever, and the entry keeps its place in the guestbook. It is converted, not removed. We consider this an important distinction and we have written at some length about why.
Will you delete something if I ask?
Yes. Abuse, someone else’s personal information, and anything posted by mistake will be removed on request — that is a different thing from decay and we treat it differently. Write to us.
How do I get a crab in the tidepool?
Go to the tidepool and name one. It joins the tank immediately and stays there. Tidepool crabs do not molt into anything — they are already crabs, which is the whole point of them — but they do grow and darken with age, so an old crab is visibly an old crab. One per visitor per day.
Why does the tagline say “in to” instead of “into”?
Addressed elsewhere. Briefly: we know, it is staying.
Is this site actually from 1998?
No. The copyright notice is a joke, the “last updated” date is frozen on purpose, and the site is a modern application that would not have run on anything available in 1998. The typeface, the layout, and the horizontal rules are all deliberate. The enthusiasm is genuine.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes, despite everything. We took the position that a website nobody can open is not period-authentic, it is just broken.