Kiss the icon: why favicons on Square Town fade after 90 days
Walls fill with dead links. Square Town's fix is a free public kiss, a 90-day clock, and grayscale instead of deletion.
"Kiss the icon" is Square Town's keep-alive mechanic: any favicon on the wall (square.pov.town) that has not been kissed for 90 days fades to grayscale with a 💔, and anyone — owner or stranger — can kiss any icon for free by clicking it and pressing 💋, which resets its 90-day clock and adds one to its public kiss count. Nothing is deleted and ownership never lapses; a faded square is still yours, still linked, just visibly unloved.
TL;DR — the decay rules
Rule Value Clock 90 days since the last kiss (the purchase counts as the first) What happens at 90 days the icon renders in grayscale, dimmed, with a 💔 in the corner; its card says "Unkissed for 90 days — it's fading. Be kind." What does not happen no removal, no loss of ownership, no loss of the link or the click count Who can kiss anyone, no account, free How click the icon on the wall → press 💋 Effect of a kiss clock resets to 90 days; kiss count +1; a 💋 burst plays on every open browser; a line in the live feed Where kisses show the icon's card, its deed page, and the "Kiss of the World" board (most kissed icons) Reversible? yes — one kiss un-fades a grey icon instantly
Why decay exists: walls fill with dead links
Every pixel wall has the same slow failure. People buy a spot, the project dies, the domain lapses, and the wall keeps showing the pixels for a site that no longer exists. Square Town's landscape file puts The Million Dollar Homepage — the 2005 original, sold out and frozen — at roughly 40 % dead links as of August 2026. Twenty-one years on, most of the wall is a graveyard you can't tell apart from the living part. The dead-links problem of pixel ads goes through the genre; the summary is that "forever" without maintenance turns into "forever broken".
The usual fixes are worse than the disease. Expiry and renewal fees turn a one-time purchase into a subscription, and the whole point of $1 forever is that there's nothing to renew. Silent removal deletes people's property. Owner-only "renew" buttons don't help when the owner has forgotten the site exists.
Square Town's answer has three parts, and each is a deliberate departure from the usual fix:
- The signal is visual, not administrative. A neglected icon goes grey. Everyone can see which parts of the wall are cared for and which aren't, and the living wall stays in colour.
- Anyone can fix it, for free. The keep-alive isn't the owner's job. If you like a project, or you're just tidy, you can kiss its icon and the grey goes away.
- Nothing is taken. Ownership, position, link, clicks, deed — all untouched. Decay is cosmetic on purpose. If you want the square gone you have to evict it, and that costs double what the owner paid.
What kissing actually does, mechanically
Under the hood every square has a "last kissed" timestamp, set when it's bought. A kiss is a POST /api/kiss/:id from the wall's card — no login, no token — that sets that timestamp to now and increments the square's kiss counter. The Worker writes a line to the live feed (one of a few, e.g. "💋 someone kissed example.com's ring", "💋 a stranger kissed example.com. Out of respect, presumably.") and the Durable Object pushes the event over WebSockets to every open browser, where a 💋 burst plays on that square. The kisser's own browser plays it once, not twice.
Rendering is a per-icon check on the client: if now minus last-kissed exceeds 90 days, the icon is drawn through a grayscale(1) brightness(.7) filter with a 💔 in the corner, and its card carries the "it's fading" note. As soon as a kiss lands, the timestamp is fresh and the next redraw is full colour again. There is no queue, no cron and no email — the wall just looks different.
The 90-day number is a constant in the Worker; the column that stores the timestamp is still called watered_at, and /api/water/ still works as an alias, because in an earlier build the mechanic was "water the plant". Kissing won. Kissing the ring is funnier.
Kissing is public and counted, so it's also a leaderboard
Every kiss adds one to the square's kiss count, and that number is shown in three places: on the icon's card when you click it on the wall, on the owner's deed page next to views and clicks, and on the 🏆 Boards tab in the side panel, where "Kiss of the World" lists the most kissed icons (next to "Clickbait Royalty" for the most clicked). Kiss counts are also in the public read API, GET /api/state, per listing.
That turns a maintenance chore into a small game. Being kissed is a compliment from a stranger; being the most kissed is a rank you can hold without paying anything. It's the only board on Square Town that money can't move directly — you can buy a Throne, you can evict a rival for double, but you can't buy a kiss. Well. You could ask nicely.
Community kissing: keeping other people's icons alive
Because anyone can kiss anything, an active corner of the wall stays in colour even when individual owners wander off. In practice, if you have a block of adjacent squares — your own projects, say — you kiss them all in ten seconds when you look at the wall. If you're a regular, you kiss the grey ones you recognise. It's the same instinct that keeps a webring alive, minus the reciprocal-link bookkeeping.
There is a small honesty check to make here: a kiss doesn't check whether the site is actually up. If a project's domain has died but the icon keeps getting kissed, it stays in colour. Decay-by-kiss measures attention, not uptime — which is the right thing to measure for a wall whose value is that people look at it, but it is not a link checker. Sites without a favicon at all are handled by a different mechanic (a clown emoji and the Hall of Clowns).
How to keep your own icon alive
- Kiss it. Open the wall, click your icon, press 💋. That's it, once every 90 days at most.
- Put your squares together. Adjacent cells are one glance and a few clicks. Also, people who click one of your icons see the others.
- Bookmark your deed. The deed page — the secret URL you got at purchase, the only proof of ownership since there are no accounts — shows the kiss count and last-kissed state alongside views and clicks, so you can see whether strangers are doing the work for you. "My deeds" remembers deeds bought in your current browser.
- Have a favicon worth kissing. People kiss icons they recognise. A grey default is nobody's favourite. 16 px favicon design tips if yours needs help.
- Don't confuse fading with eviction. A grey icon is still yours. The only way to lose a square is for someone to pay double what you paid — see what happens when you get evicted and the eviction glossary entry. Kissing does not protect against eviction, and eviction does not require the icon to be grey.
How this compares with other decay mechanics
Square Town's landscape file (verified 17–18 August 2026) lists a handful of sites that use time-based decay or keep-alive. None does the "anyone can kiss anyone's icon to keep it alive" thing, which the file notes explicitly.
| Site | Year / status | What decays | What resets or slows it | Difference from Square Town |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Say That Sh** | 2026, active (HN Mar 2026) | the value of a single homepage message, HN-style gravity; replacing it costs the current decayed value + $0.01 | likes slow the decay | one text slot with a decaying replacement price; the decay is economic, not visual, and there's no grid |
| 9Mpixels | 2024, dead | free pixels expire after 24 h | paying makes them permanent | free-then-pay permanence; expiry is deletion, and paid pixels never decay |
| disappearing.chat | 2024, dead | anonymous posts auto-delete after 24 h | each upvote or comment resets the timer | closest in spirit — interaction by others resets a clock — but posts are deleted, not greyed, and nothing is owned or paid |
| This Website Will Self Destruct | 2020, dead | the whole site "dies" if no message is posted for 24 h | any message resets it | one timer for the whole site vs one timer per square |
| TestiMoney | 2026, dead (Show HN 2026) | paid messages decay in real time after payment | pay again | pay-per-message with continuous decay; no grid, no free reset |
| Square Town | 2026, active | the appearance of an icon, after 90 days without a kiss | anyone's free kiss | ownership never lapses; decay is grayscale not deletion; the reset is free and public; kisses are counted on a board |
Three design differences stand out. Timescale: 24 hours (9Mpixels, disappearing.chat, Self Destruct) makes a wall a chore; 90 days is long enough that an owner who cares can't miss it and short enough that a genuinely abandoned icon greys out within a season. Consequence: everyone else deletes or charges; Square Town only changes colour. Who resets it: disappearing.chat and Self Destruct let anyone reset via interaction, which is the closest analogue, but there the thing being kept alive is a post or a site, not someone's owned property on a shared grid. As of August 2026, four of the five are dead — decay mechanics have a habit of outliving their sites, which is one more argument for making the mechanic cosmetic rather than destructive.
The short version
Icons on Square Town fade to grey after 90 days without a kiss because the alternative is a wall that quietly turns into The Million Dollar Homepage's 40 % dead links. Anyone can kiss any icon, free, and kisses are public and counted, so keeping the wall in colour is a shared, slightly silly, entirely voluntary job. Your square never stops being yours; it just stops being in colour until someone — you or a stranger — kisses the ring. The one-paragraph definition is at What does "kiss the icon" mean on Square Town?; the full rules are on How Square Town works — the complete rulebook.
FAQ
What happens if nobody kisses my icon on Square Town?
After 90 days without a kiss it renders in grayscale, dimmed, with a 💔 in the corner, and its card says it's fading. It's still your square, still linked, still counting clicks; nothing is removed.
How do I kiss an icon on Square Town?
Click the icon on the wall to open its card and press 💋. No account or payment is needed. The 90-day clock resets, the kiss count goes up by one, and a 💋 burst plays on every open browser.
Can I kiss my own icon?
Yes. Owners can kiss their own icons, and so can anyone else. A kiss from anyone resets the same 90-day clock.
Do kisses do anything besides stop the fade?
They're counted. The kiss count shows on the icon's card, on the owner's deed page, in the public /api/state JSON, and on the "Kiss of the World" board of most-kissed icons in the side panel.
Does a faded icon get evicted?
No. Fading is cosmetic. The only way a square changes hands is eviction — someone paying double what the current owner paid — and that works on colourful and grey icons alike.
Why 90 days and not something shorter?
Short timers (24 hours on sites like 9Mpixels or disappearing.chat) turn a wall into a chore. 90 days is long enough that an owner who cares won't miss it and short enough that a genuinely abandoned icon greys out within a season.
Does kissing check whether the site is still online?
No. A kiss measures attention, not uptime. An icon whose site is down stays in colour as long as people kiss it. Sites with no favicon at all are flagged separately with a clown emoji.
Which other sites have a decay or keep-alive mechanic?
As of August 2026: Say That Sh** (message value decays, likes slow it), 9Mpixels (free pixels expire after 24 h unless paid), disappearing.chat and This Website Will Self Destruct (interaction resets a 24 h timer), and TestiMoney (paid messages decay). None lets anyone kiss anyone's owned icon to keep it alive, and four of the five are dead.
Put your favicon on the wall
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