Domain of ‘disturbing’ website taken down in 1999 now takes you to Disney.com
This is definitely one of the stranger stories on the internet.
The World Wide Web is full of curious mysteries, and recently people have been fixating on a particularly odd one.
Turns out, if you go to a web browser and type 'paranoia.com' into the address bar, rather than heading to whatever website you might expect, you get redirected to your local Disney homepage.
This is pretty confusing, a web address that you wouldn't think would take you to the home of Mickey and more, and has fueled a whole heap of speculation.
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In particular, earlier this year a popular YouTuber, Nexpo, made a lengthy 36-minute video looking into the whole situation, putting a whole lot more eyes on the story.
Before we get to that video's argument, though, it's worth some more background info. It would seem, according to checks made by the website ClickOrlando, that the Paranoia web domain is now owned by ABC, which is a subsidiary of Disney, which somewhat explains the redirect.
Back in the 1990s, Paranoia.com was reportedly set up by an individual user with the aim of being a space free of censorship, where anything could be discussed - quite a common goal in that earlier era of the web.
According to ClilckOrlando, its founder, a user called KevinTX, wrote a post in 1995 saying: "It’s been very rewarding to watch an idealistic dream turn into reality! I’ve met a lot of really great net-denizens and seen firsthand how this project has been able to empower people who wouldn’t otherwise have nice net access at a low cost."
Over time, though, the website started to play host to discussions of illicit topics including illegal things like cannibalism and prostitution, alongside its wider range of more light-hearted pages.
This wasn't explicitly linked to the site shutting down in 1999, which was apparently due to server issues, but nonetheless made it a very controversial domain.
When it came back online in 2000, the address started redirecting to a French website and later changed to send users to Go.com, its first Disney-related page.
This is where Nexpo comes in - its video suggests that this could all be explained by a TV game show from 2000 called Paranoia.
It was produced by Fox, which Disney later came to own, and had a few web domains associated with the show, which might explain how Disney came to own this particular one.
Now, with nothing to usefully do with the domain, some automated system at Disney may have simply set up a redirect on it, leaving us with this weird and roundabout tale.