Why AfterLife Exists

Do you remember what the internet used to feel like? Going online was like exploring. You quite literally had no idea what you might discover. It felt like at any moment, you might uncover your new favorite place, community, game, or something in a category of its own.

For an increasingly large number of people, that feeling has never existed. That’s one of the primary reasons I created AfterLife. The other reason is that the ability to find other, genuinely alternative people online has become ever more difficult. We no longer had a space to call our own, and that just felt wrong. So, I decided to create the type of online space that I wish existed.

Image Credit: Vayne Rose

What is AfterLife?

AfterLife is a social media site made specifically for, and by, alternative people. It’s a place focused on genuine connection, creating real, meaningful content, and fixing the bad habits we’ve learned from other online places. It’s not for endless doomscrolling, algorithmic content made to make you engage, or AI-generated work spit out by a machine.

Image Credit: userelaine_exe

Before AfterLife

Before I ever wrote a line of AfterLife’s code, I was working as a software developer at a mid-sized corporation (which, for my own sake, shall remain nameless). Their primary product was functional and even useful, but boring. I believe this created a sense of unrest in me, and it was slowly destroying my genuine love of coding that had led me into the career.

Of course, I had side projects I worked on in my free time. After all, I had been a hobbyist web developer for years before I ever even landed a job. One was a site that tracked prices of certain tech products over time, so you could tell if you were really getting a deal or not. Another was a small, vampire-themed sidescroller (the singular level I finished is currently playable on AfterLife). But those projects were nothing special, only something to pass the time.

Eventually, the big idea came. What if I made my own social media site, one just for people I’d actually like to be friends with and interact with?

But why a social media site?

For years, I had been trying my hand at being a niche social media alternative fashion influencer. And before I worked in tech, I was actually a marketing manager! So, I was deeply acquainted with social media. In fact, I had a rather love/hate relationship with it. I loved what I believed it /could/ be, but pretty much hated what it actually was. Especially for alternative people.

If you’re an alternative person who uses social media (and you probably are, if you’re reading this!) then you know exactly what I mean. 

Endless influencers create pseudo-alternative content for views without giving a single thought to the culture. Even those who are a part of the culture reiterate the same points, wearing the same outfits, because they know it gets views. 

People are no longer forming their own opinions; they are learning what to like from the influencers they watch. People have no drive to discover and find new music; they listen to what they are told to listen to. And fashion has been reduced to a handful of acceptable items that everyone seems to switch out for the new acceptable items at the same time.

In retrospect, this combination of wanting to create something better and my deep association with social media likely led to the creation of AfterLife.

Creating AfterLife

So, how does one go about building a social media site? Let me start by saying, I knew from the get-go that it would entail a tremendous amount of work. Even so, I still greatly underestimated just how much work it would actually be. Even as I type this, it’s during a small break I am taking between fixing a small bug and progressing my work on a new feature I hope to implement at 25,000 users.

Image Credit: Vayne Rose

There’s a certain paralysis that grips developers, and on a bigger scale, all creatives, where we feel the need to make things 100% perfect before we ever release them. I decided very early on that could not be the case with AfterLife. It would never be perfect, and it would certainly never be done. So I sat down and set out to build a few core features, with a passable (and now horribly embarrassing) UI.

For those who are active AfterLife users but joined relatively recently, you might be shocked to learn how few features were actually available on launch. We didn’t have profile stickers, we had one chatroom, you couldn’t embed videos anywhere, profile music didn’t autoplay, most of the homepage modules (quizzes, polls, etc) did not exist; we had no DIYs, no Zines, no Webcomics and the list goes on and on and on. We didn’t even have Whispers at launch.

In fact, it’s easier to list what we did have. A relatively small amount of profile customization features, the ability to friend each other and send messages, journals/photos, and one chatroom! We also had 0 mods.

But the thing is, I never stopped building. And things felt like they were progressing very quickly. In reality, it only felt quick because I was spending 60+ hours a week building. Those first 6 months, I would work my full 40 hours a week 9-to-5, and then come home and work until I couldn’t stay awake any longer. I also spent all of my weekends building.

I suppose I got a bit obsessive, but once the site started coming together, it was the only thing I wanted to do.

The Launch of AfterLife

AfterLife officially launched on July 13, 2025. The site went live; I created and posted a short TikTok, and then I went to have dinner. It took 30 minutes for the first user to sign up. Within 24 hours, we had 150. The TikTok I posted racked up about 30,000 views, and suddenly I realized people were just as excited about my idea as I was.

From that moment on, AfterLife became my life. I spent every waking moment either working on new features, fixing bugs, or thinking up cool new additions. I wanted to spend more time promoting, and I did when time allowed, but I’m thankful that the community took on much of that themselves. All sorts of people were posting their AfterLife invite codes and asking others to join them. Special shout-out to Mika, who has single-handedly reaped 6,000 cybersouls for us!

AfterLife Now

AfterLife is now a community of 20,000 users spread over 32 different subcultures, ranging in age from 13 to 60+. We have people from every continent and the majority of countries.

What has been the most interesting to me, though, is seeing AfterLife develop a culture of its own. There are people who log on every single day to talk in the chatrooms, people who spend hours making ridiculously elaborate profiles (only to completely redo them a week later), people writing thesis-level work disguised as simple journal entries. People share incredibly complex artwork, beautiful photography, incredible music, stunning outfits, and some have made genuine friends through the site.

There are now countless usernames I immediately recognize as fixtures of the community. AfterLife has reached the point where I sometimes don’t even see all the cool stuff happening on it. Occasionally, I’ll stumble across a wonderful journal or cool Byte fanart that I totally missed the first time around.

Profile Credit: @userelaine_exe, @vampvial, @dollidotlollipop

Of course, a community of this size would not be possible without the help of our amazing mod team. A website is just a website; the community makes all the difference, and I want to quickly give a special shout-out to all the people who keep AfterLife a safe and fun place to be. Thanks for all you do @vampvial, @dollidotlollipop, @userelaine_exe, @muirrean, @vuvamp, @httpsasher, @xheartliesbleedingx, @invocationofabsence, @maddythebatqueen, @cathedralcats, and @scytheuser!

The Future of AfterLife

So, where does AfterLife go from here?

The short answer is that I have no intention of slowing down. I have a seemingly endless list of things I want to build, and somehow that list only seems to get longer as AfterLife grows. There are new features, games, customization options, and entirely new parts of the site that I hope to introduce over the coming months and years.

But more importantly than any individual feature is making sure AfterLife never loses sight of why I created it in the first place. I don’t want AfterLife to become another massive social media platform where everyone is chasing numbers, algorithms decide what you’re allowed to see, and individual identity gets flattened into whatever happens to be popular that week.

I want it to remain a weird little corner of the internet that belongs to us. Ideally, just a much bigger one.