Goodbye Asiator.net!

During the Internet bubble, the death of so many web sites and services was largely ignored. Communities and dedicated users weren't quite devoted to any web site quite yet in those days. Although apathy and detachment still reign on the Internet (except when it comes to fan sites about vampires and wizards), users today are more aware of their loss when a website closes down. It's the niche websites that don't get much attention in the Internet primarily because they're users are fewer and extremely consistent.

Asiator.net specialized in torrents for Asian movies, Asian movie subtitles, and Asian music videos (including K-Pop and J-Pop). The concept was unique and the content was broad. At a time when Japanese anime has become extremely long in the tooth (it was already an underground sensation in the late 80s and early 90s), fans of Asian celluloid were provided access to Japanese Pinku films, exceptionally well-made Korean comedies, Thai horror and porn films, Taiwan soap operas, and underrated non-martial arts HK movies. I only discovered Asiator.net quite recently, but was truly impressed with the wide variety of content. As a fan of Asian literature and media, Asiator.net provided a service that no other torrent site provided.



It's sad to see a good web site go, but I understand just how expensive it is to set up and maintain a torrent server, especially one that has the amount of traffic as Asiator.net. I feel for the site administrator and salute him for his efforts. There are so many independent and free web services out there that are maintained by tireless men and women which many users all over the world take for granted. "Sophisticated" Internet users often callously jump from one web site to another when it goes down. Most torrent fans hardly blinked when Mininova.org was temporarily put out to pasture. Goodbye Asiator.net! And thank you once again for the service!