waxy.org

Andy Baio retired Playfic in August 2026, 14 years after launching it in 2012. The interactive fiction writing and sharing community, built with his then-teenaged nephew Cooper, was shut down for two stated reasons: maintenance burden and obsolescence. Baio announced the closure on Waxy.org as part of a broader "Waxy Refresh" — a months-long effort to update several of his long-dormant side projects.

What Playfic Was

Playfic was a community for writing and sharing interactive fiction games. Baio launched it in 2012 with Cooper, who was a teenager at the time. The site let people create and publish playable text-based stories, and it ran for 14 years before being retired.

Why It Was Shut Down

Baio gave two main reasons in his announcement:

• Maintenance — keeping the site running required ongoing work he was no longer able or willing to sustain.
• Obsolescence — the platform had aged out of relevance, making continued upkeep hard to justify.

The closure was framed as a deliberate retirement rather than a sudden failure. Baio described it as "a bit different" from the other refreshes in the same series, since those projects were updated and kept alive while Playfic was ended outright.

Context: The Waxy Refresh

Playfic's shutdown was the third in a sequence of project updates Baio published in mid-2026:

The pattern is worth noting: Baio spent months auditing and reviving projects he could save, and Playfic was the one he decided not to. Supercut.org, by contrast, was brought back online in 2020 after a five-year outage and given a full redesign in 2026 — so the decision to end Playfic wasn't about abandoning old work in general, but about this specific project's viability.

What This Means If You Used Playfic

The announcement confirms the site is no longer operating. Baio's post runs about 800 words and includes a comments section, but the excerpt available doesn't indicate any export tool, archive, or migration path for existing Playfic content. If you had stories hosted there, the closure notice as published doesn't describe a way to retrieve them.

For anyone interested in interactive fiction platforms, Playfic's 14-year run is a useful case study in how hobby-scale community projects age: they can stay functional for a long time, but maintenance and relevance eventually become the deciding factors rather than any single technical failure.

Waxy.org is the personal site of Andy Baio, and it functions as a hub for the projects he has created, helped build, or maintained over the years. The site itself is a blog and sandbox rather than a product, so the projects appear in two ways: as ongoing links and as posts documenting their creation, redesign, or retirement. The most current status information comes from a series of "Waxy Refresh" posts published in July and August 2026, which describe a quiet effort to update several long-dormant side projects.

Projects Named on the Site

The site's own description lists the following:

• XOXO — an event Baio made
• Upcoming — a project he made
• Belong.io — a project he made
• Playfic — a project he made
• Kind of Bloop — a project he made
• Kickstarter — a project he helped build
• "a bunch of other stuff too"

That list is a starting point, not a complete inventory. The refresh posts add detail on two projects in particular.

Playfic: Retired After 14 Years

Playfic was a community for writing and sharing interactive fiction games, launched in 2012 with Baio's then-teenaged nephew, Cooper. According to the August 3, 2026 post, it was retired after 14 years.

The stated reasons were maintenance and obsolescence — two separate pressures. Maintenance covers the ongoing cost of keeping a community platform running; obsolescence covers the platform no longer fitting current technology or use. The post is titled "The End of Playfic," so treat the shutdown as final rather than a pause.

If you are looking for Playfic today, the practical takeaway is that the community is no longer operating as described in its original form.

Supercut.org: Redesigned and Back Online

Supercut.org has a longer and messier history than Playfic, and it is currently live.

• 2011 — first launched as part of Seven on Seven with Michael Bell-Smith
• Later in 2011 — redesigned as a browsable archive of every supercut Baio could find
• End of 2015 — taken offline entirely after his server was hacked
• 2020 — brought back after auditing the old PHP for security holes
• July 31, 2026 — design refresh announced

The refresh retired the basic Bootstrap theme, made the site responsive, and kept the overall layout. Content changes included:

• Removing all unavailable videos
• Replacing deleted videos with alternatives where possible
• Clearing a long backlog of submissions
• Adding many new supercuts, several from Max Tohline's A Supercut of Supercuts: Aesthetics, Histories, Databases

The live collection now holds over 580 videos. There is an "Add" link on the site for suggesting more.

Why So Many Videos Disappeared

The post lists the causes directly: videos were deleted, privatized, removed for copyright infringement, or made inaccessible by Vimeo. This is a useful pattern to recognize if you maintain any kind of media archive — link rot on third-party platforms is the default, not the exception, and replacements are not always findable.

The Site Itself Was Refreshed

A July 30, 2026 post describes smaller incremental changes made over the preceding weeks: fixing long-standing issues and polishing rough edges. Baio notes that readers who consume Waxy.org entirely via RSS may not have noticed the changes at all.

How to Read the Project List

The pattern across these posts is worth noting: Baio revisits old projects in batches, decides per project whether to repair or retire, and documents the reasoning. If you are trying to determine whether a specific Waxy project is still running, the refresh posts are the most reliable signal available here — and for anything not covered in them, the site itself is the place to check.

Andy Baio spent several months in 2026 quietly updating Waxy.org and a set of long-dormant side projects. The refresh covered three things: small fixes to the blog itself, a full redesign and cleanup of Supercut.org, and the retirement of Playfic after 14 years. Each change is described in a separate post on Waxy.org, dated July 30, July 31, and August 3, 2026.

The blog: small incremental fixes

The Waxy.org refresh itself was the least visible of the three. Baio describes it as "a bunch of small incremental changes over the last few weeks," mostly fixing long-standing issues and polishing rough edges rather than adding anything major. He notes that readers who follow the site entirely through RSS may not have noticed the changes at all — and that even people who visit the site directly might miss them.

The practical takeaway: if you only consume Waxy.org via feed, the site's appearance and behavior may differ from what you remember, but the content stream is unchanged.

Supercut.org: redesign, cleanup, and a revived archive

Supercut.org launched in 2011 as part of Seven on Seven with Michael Bell-Smith, then was redesigned later that year as a browsable archive of supercuts. Its history since then explains most of the 2026 work:

• Videos gradually disappeared — deleted, set to private, removed for copyright infringement, or made inaccessible by Vimeo.
• The site went offline entirely at the end of 2015 after Baio's server was hacked.
• It stayed offline for five years after a server migration, then returned in 2020 once Baio audited the old PHP for security holes.

The 2026 refresh addressed the accumulated problems:

If you have a supercut to suggest, the site's "Add" link is still the submission path.

Playfic: shut down after 14 years

Playfic was a community for writing and sharing interactive fiction games, launched in 2012 by Baio and his then-teenaged nephew, Cooper. The August 3, 2026 post announces its retirement after 14 years.

Baio gives two reasons for closing it: maintenance and obsolescence. The full post runs about 800 words and has a comment thread, so the detailed reasoning sits behind the "Continue reading" link rather than in the summary.

What this means if you used these projects

• Supercut.org is live, responsive, and larger than before — but some videos you remember may be gone, replaced only where an alternative existed.
• Playfic is no longer operating, so any interactive fiction you wrote or played there is affected by the shutdown.
• Waxy.org itself continues as before, with cosmetic and maintenance fixes rather than structural change.

The three posts are the primary sources for each change, and each one links to further detail beyond the excerpt shown on the homepage.

Waxy.org is the personal website and project sandbox of Andy Baio, a writer and developer who has built or helped build a long list of web projects. It is not a company site, a news outlet, or a commercial product — it is one person's space for blogging, archiving, and documenting his own work. If you are trying to figure out whether Waxy.org is a publication you should follow, a tool you can use, or the home of a specific project, the short answer is: it is primarily a personal blog that also serves as the hub for Baio's various side projects.

Who runs it

The site describes itself plainly as "the personal sandbox of Andy Baio." Baio is the common thread behind everything hosted or referenced there. The site's own description lists XOXO, Upcoming, Belong.io, Playfic, Kind of Bloop, and Kickstarter among the things he made or helped build. That list is useful because it tells you what kind of site this is: a place where the person behind those projects writes about them, rather than a brand or organization publishing under a masthead.

What you actually find there

Waxy.org functions mainly as a blog. Posts are dated and signed by Baio, and they tend to be first-person updates about projects, changes to the site, and reflections on maintaining things over time. The content is a mix of:

• Project announcements and updates — new work, redesigns, and shutdowns.
• Retrospectives on long-running projects — what happened, why, and what changed.
• Site maintenance notes — small changes to Waxy.org itself.

A representative example is the "Waxy Refresh" series of posts. In one, Baio explains that he spent several months quietly updating several of his projects, including his blog and Supercut.org. In another, he announces the retirement of Playfic, the interactive fiction community he launched in 2012 with his then-teenaged nephew, Cooper, citing maintenance and obsolescence after 14 years. A third post covers a refresh of Supercut.org, a browsable archive of supercut videos he first launched in 2011, which went offline at the end of 2015 after his server was hacked, returned in 2020 after he audited his old PHP for security holes, and was later redesigned and cleaned up.

These posts are characteristic of the site: long-running personal projects, honest accounts of what went wrong, and incremental fixes rather than product marketing.

Why it is not a commercial product or news site

Nothing in the site's own description frames it as a business. There is no pricing page, no subscription tier, and no editorial team. The only pricing-related link found on the site points to buying a book at an external domain (thedictionaryofobscuresorrows.com), which is a separate project, not a Waxy.org product. You should not assume the site is free in the sense of offering a paid service for nothing — it simply is not selling anything in the first place. It is a personal record.

How to use it

If you are looking for a specific project Baio built, Waxy.org is often the place where its status is documented — including when it shuts down, as with Playfic. If you want to follow his writing, the blog is the main surface, and posts are also available via RSS (the site notes that readers who follow entirely via RSS may miss visual refreshes). If you want to browse an archive he maintains, Supercut.org is linked from his updates and accepts suggestions through an "Add" link.

In short: treat Waxy.org as a personal blog and project index, not as a service to sign up for or a news source to cite. Its value is in Baio's first-hand accounts of building, maintaining, and retiring web projects over more than a decade.

Supercut.org is a browsable archive of supercut videos — montages that collect many clips sharing a common word, phrase, trope, or visual motif. Andy Baio launched it in 2011 as part of Seven on Seven with Michael Bell-Smith, and redesigned it later that year as an archive of every supercut he could find. As of its 2026 refresh, the live collection holds over 580 videos, and anyone can suggest additions through the site's "Add" link.

What counts as a supercut

A supercut is a compilation built around a single repeated element — a catchphrase, a gesture, a shot type, a line of dialogue — edited together so the repetition itself becomes the point. The archive is organized around that definition rather than around genre or source material, so it mixes film, TV, news, and internet footage.

A history of going offline and coming back

The site's uptime has been uneven, which matters if you remember it disappearing:

• 2011 — launched as part of Seven on Seven, then redesigned as a browsable archive.
• End of 2015 — taken offline entirely after Baio's server was hacked. He migrated to a new server, but Supercut.org didn't make the transition and stayed down for five years.
• 2020 — brought back after he audited the site's old PHP for security holes.
• 2026 — a long-overdue design refresh, retiring the basic Bootstrap theme and making the site responsive while keeping the overall layout.

What changed in the 2026 refresh

The refresh was mostly cleanup rather than reinvention:

• Unavailable videos were removed, and deleted videos were replaced with alternatives where Baio could find them.
• The long backlog of submissions was cleared.
• New supercuts were added, many drawn from Max Tohline's A Supercut of Supercuts: Aesthetics, Histories, Databases.
• The live collection reached over 580 videos.

Videos go missing for ordinary reasons — deleted, privatized, removed for copyright infringement, or made inaccessible by Vimeo — so expect the archive to be a moving target rather than a fixed catalog.

How to browse or contribute

Browsing is the default use: the site works as an archive you page through rather than a search-driven database. If you know a supercut that isn't listed, the "Add" link lets you suggest it. Baio describes clearing the submission backlog as tedious work, so submissions may not appear immediately.

Where it fits among Baio's projects

Supercut.org is one of several long-running side projects on Waxy.org, alongside Playfic — the interactive fiction community he launched in 2012 with his then-teenaged nephew Cooper and retired in 2026 after 14 years — plus XOXO, Upcoming, Belong.io, and Kind of Bloop. The 2026 refreshes of the blog, Supercut.org, and Playfic's retirement were part of the same quiet round of maintenance across those projects.