Where Did Everything Go?
Sometimes the hardest thing to explain isn't what you built—it's everything that disappeared along the way.
If you've ever looked at my GitHub profile, there's a good chance you've asked yourself at least one of these questions.
"You've been on GitHub since 2021... where are all the repositories?"
"How do you have more than 100 followers but follow fewer than 20 people?"
"Why don't you have a Telegram community if you've been building bots for years?"
"Your visitor badge only shows a couple hundred views. Is your profile really that new?"
They're all fair questions.
In fact...
I've been asked them more times than I can count.
The funny part is that every one of those questions has the same answer.
My journey didn't disappear.
Parts of it simply got deleted.
Sometimes accidentally.
Sometimes intentionally.
Sometimes because younger me genuinely didn't care.
Before you continue...
If you haven't read the previous post,
👉 "The Username That Started Everything"
I'd recommend starting there first.
It explains how Aasfcyberking became my online identity, why it mattered so much to me, and why I eventually rebranded to MKishoreDev.
This article continues that story.
Because changing my username wasn't the only thing that changed.
A lot more disappeared than most people realize.
I had a really bad habit
Looking back...
I probably shouldn't have been trusted with a Telegram account.
Seriously.
One thing I used to do constantly was delete my Telegram account.
Not uninstall it.
Delete it.
Completely.
Why?
Honestly...
Because I was just a kid.
I wasn't thinking about usernames.
Or followers.
Or preserving history.
Or branding.
I didn't care about any of that.
If I got bored...
Delete.
If I wanted a fresh start...
Delete.
If something annoyed me...
Delete.
A few weeks later?
Create another account.
Repeat.
At the time, it felt completely normal.
I never imagined those tiny decisions would quietly erase years of history.
Eventually I lost things I thought I'd always have.
Usernames.
Bots.
Groups.
Channels.
Communities.
Even memories tied to those accounts.
Back then I simply shrugged and thought,
"I'll just make another one."
Turns out...
The internet doesn't always give things back.
"Where are all your Telegram groups?"
This is another question I get surprisingly often.
People discover that I started with Telegram bots back in 2021.
Then they search for my communities.
And...
There aren't any.
At least, not the ones that used to exist.
The reason is exactly the same.
I deleted my account.
More than once.
Every time I deleted it, I wasn't just deleting an account.
I was deleting years of work.
Bots.
Groups.
Channels.
Usernames.
Communities.
Things people had actually used.
At the time, I never thought,
"Maybe I'll want this five years from now."
I only thought,
"It's fine. I can always create another one."
Sometimes I did.
Sometimes I didn't.
That's why there isn't one giant Telegram community attached to my name today.
Not because I never built one.
Because younger me never imagined I'd one day care about preserving it.
The GitHub nobody sees
If you discovered my GitHub recently, it probably looks like I started becoming active only in the past couple of years.
That's understandable.
Because what you're seeing today isn't the GitHub I had back then.
Around 2023, my profile looked very different.
More repositories.
More forks.
More stars.
More experiments.
Many of those repositories were Telegram bot modules, automation projects, utilities, and things I built while learning.
Some were messy.
Some were actually useful.
Some became surprisingly popular inside Telegram developer communities.
In fact...
You can still find traces of them today.
Search for Aasfcyberking on GitHub.
Look through older repositories.
Forks.
Archived projects.
Code snippets.
Contributors.
You'll still find my username attached to code that survived even though my own repositories didn't.
The internet has a surprisingly good memory.
Even when we don't.
The mistake that erased almost everything
Then one day...
I made one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made on GitHub.
I accidentally exposed one of my GitHub Personal Access Tokens.
It was entirely my fault.
The safest option was obvious.
Delete everything.
Rotate everything.
Start over.
So that's exactly what I did.
Repository after repository disappeared.
Public repositories.
Private repositories.
Experiments.
Finished projects.
Unfinished ideas.
Things I'd been working on for months.
Some private projects that even today I can never recover.
By the end of it...
Years of GitHub history were gone.
Almost overnight.
Did I regret it?
At the time?
Not really.
In fact, I remember thinking something like this:
"It's only code."
If I built it once...
I could build it again.
So I moved on.
I kept learning.
I kept building.
I didn't spend weeks mourning repositories.
Because the skills were still there.
The experience was still there.
The lessons were still there.
The code was gone.
But the developer who wrote it wasn't.
Looking back...
I still think that mindset helped me.
But today...
I'd probably make a different decision.
The regret I didn't expect
Recently, something changed.
People started paying much more attention to GitHub profiles.
Recruiters.
Developers.
Open-source maintainers.
Potential collaborators.
Suddenly repositories weren't just repositories anymore.
They became part of your portfolio.
People looked at:
- Repository history
- Stars
- Forks
- Contributions
- Activity
- Project maturity
And that's when I realized what I'd actually lost.
Not my skills.
Not my knowledge.
Not my ability to build.
I lost the history.
The public proof.
The stars.
The forks.
The discussions.
The contribution graphs attached to those projects.
That's the only part I truly regret.
Not because stars define a developer.
But because they represented people finding something I built useful.
And that's something worth preserving.
"How do you have over 100 followers but follow fewer than 20 people?"
This one probably creates the most confusion.
People often assume one of two things.
Either...
I followed hundreds of people hoping they'd follow me back.
Or...
I unfollowed everyone later.
Neither is true.
Back in my Telegram bot days, many of the repositories I maintained were libraries, utilities, and forks that other developers actually used.
Whenever I updated something, Telegram developer communities would quickly find it.
Many developers followed my GitHub to receive updates whenever I published new code.
Naturally, I followed many of them back.
Not because I wanted a higher following count.
Because it simply felt polite.
Over time, though, I realized something.
Most of those accounts weren't people I actively learned from or collaborated with anymore.
Many had become inactive.
Some had abandoned GitHub completely.
Others had only followed because they used one repository years ago.
So I slowly cleaned up my following list.
Not because follower counts mattered.
Because I wanted it to reflect the people whose work I genuinely keep up with today.
The followers remained.
My following list became much smaller.
"Why does your visitor badge only show a few hundred visitors?"
This one is actually much simpler.
Here's the badge everyone usually refers to:
A lot of people assume this number comes directly from GitHub.
It doesn't.
GitHub doesn't provide an official profile visitor counter.
Instead, most developers—including me—use a service called Komarev.
Every time someone opens a profile that contains the badge in its README, GitHub requests the badge image from Komarev's servers.
That request increments the counter by one.
The badge simply displays whatever number exists in Komarev's database.
That's all it does.
It's not connected to GitHub Analytics.
It doesn't know how many people have ever visited your profile.
It only counts requests made for that specific badge.
And here's the important part.
When I rebranded from Aasfcyberking to MKishoreDev, I also changed the username inside the badge.
That means Komarev started tracking an entirely new profile entry.
The counter effectively restarted.
The old count still exists.
It's simply attached to my old username instead.
If you're curious, you can still see it yourself.
The history didn't disappear.
It's just stored under a different name.
I didn't actually lose the code
One thing people often misunderstand is this:
I didn't lose everything.
I lost the publicity.
The repositories disappeared.
The stars disappeared.
The forks disappeared.
The discussions disappeared.
But surprisingly...
Most of the code survived.
Some projects were recovered from old forks.
Some were sitting on an old laptop.
Some existed as ZIP files I'd sent to friends through Telegram years earlier.
Some were hidden away inside backups I completely forgot existed.
Ironically...
The code was easier to recover than the history.
You can rebuild a repository.
You can rewrite documentation.
You can even improve the project.
What you can't recreate are years of stars, forks, issue discussions, contributor graphs, and people discovering your work at the time it was originally published.
That's the part that's impossible to restore.
Does any of this actually matter?
A few months ago, I probably would've answered differently.
Today...
I think it matters a little.
Not because GitHub stars define your abilities.
They don't.
Some incredible developers have almost none.
Some highly starred repositories contain very little actual engineering.
Stars are a signal.
Not a measurement of skill.
But they do tell a story.
They show that something you built was useful enough for another person to bookmark.
That's meaningful.
Still...
If losing repositories taught me anything, it's this:
The most valuable thing you can build isn't a GitHub profile.
It's the ability to build again.
Repositories can disappear.
Usernames can change.
Communities can fade.
Code can be deleted.
Skills stay.
Curiosity stays.
Experience stays.
And those are much harder to lose.
Looking back
If I could go back to 2021...
Would I stop myself from deleting those accounts?
Probably.
Would I save every repository?
Absolutely.
Would I preserve every community I built?
Without thinking twice.
But I also know something else.
If I hadn't made those mistakes...
I probably wouldn't appreciate what I have today nearly as much.
Those decisions taught me lessons that no tutorial ever could.
Today my GitHub may look smaller than my journey.
My visitor badge may reset.
My Telegram communities may no longer exist.
Many repositories may have disappeared.
But none of those things erased what they taught me.
The projects are gone.
The lessons aren't.
And in the end...
I think that's the part worth keeping.
P.S. If you've ever wondered why my GitHub seems "too small" for someone who's been building since 2021...
Now you know.
Sometimes the biggest commits are the ones that never make it into the graph.