Ancient Web: Martha Ainsworth Wrote a Five-Minute Lifeline for the 1995 Web

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

In the mid-1990s, the Internet was becoming a place where people might bring problems they could not discuss with anyone nearby. Martha Ainsworth wrote a webpage meant to meet one of those people at an especially difficult moment.

Read the preserved Metanoia page.

The document, titled Suicide: Read This First, carries a copyright notice beginning in 1995. Ainsworth addresses the reader directly and offers a short conversation rather than a clinical reference manual. She acknowledges that a stranger arriving on the page may be in emotional pain, then encourages reaching out to another person and seeking support.

It is an unusual early-web artifact because its purpose is neither entertainment nor a display of technical skill. The intended interaction is simply one human being reading another person's words.

A page designed for a vulnerable visitor

The essay invites the reader to allow a few minutes for reading. Its language is personal and nonjudgmental, framed around the idea that distress can exceed a person's available coping resources. The emphasis is on surviving the immediate crisis and contacting supportive people.

The original article eventually connects to additional discussions of grief, stigma, depression, and assistance. It has a compact form and uses simple illustrations alongside the text. Ainsworth credits David Conroy's work as inspiration, and a later notice identifies Dr. John Grohol as a reviewer.

A 2004 mental-health newsletter reproduced the piece with attribution, providing contemporary evidence that the page had circulated beyond its original address. A separate preservation page explicitly dates the original effort to 1995.

The Metanoia version has received later updates. It includes older telephone numbers and other external links whose current availability cannot be assumed. Anyone seeking present-day crisis support should use up-to-date local services, not treat a preserved 1990s webpage as a current directory.

The site also makes a historical point about Internet community. Long before polished health portals and platform-mediated support groups, independent web authors were experimenting with ways to communicate care across distance.

This was an attempt to make a static HTML page function as a moment of company and connection. Its age, authorship, and documented circulation are reason enough to preserve it thoughtfully.

Read Ainsworth's original text and attribution.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.