To those girls in the late nineties and at the turn of the century, those teenagers, who found each other through their blogs years before “blog” was a word. To those girls who resisted using the word “blog” when it did become a word. To those girls who felt the allure of a secret online journal in a time when the internet was commonly believed to be for freaks. To those girls who used invented names, revealing their true names to only the most trusted, even though their online journals spoke of the most personal things. Or maybe because of this. To those girls who experimented with words, with photography, with design, with the way the three worked together. To those girls who grew up on the internet in a very different way than today. To those girls who dreamed of big lives or of manageable lives, who have gone on to do things different from what they’d imagined, yet somehow exactly what we’d always imagined. To those girls who I met on the internet more than fifteen years ago, when it seemed so quiet and small. When the concept of monetizing your blog was for freaks. To those girls, women now, who have remained in touch through my short attention span and my dozens of deleted accounts. To those girls I have regrettably let go. To those smart, creative, opinionated, funny, questioning girls. To all of it, to everything.
A love letter to the internet, 1997-2001.
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<3 <3 <3 I LOVE THIS.
Thank you! <3 to you!
Oddly enough, I was looking at screenshots of my old ‘anime’ layouts. Also, after reading this, I went back and looked at my old Livejournal, which I have not used since 2009…cannot believe some of the stuff I posted there lol. My how things have changed!
I forgot to mention that I was late to the online journal game (2004 I think I started my lj). Even my first website wasn’t until probably ’01 or ’02.
Hey, ’01 or ’02 is nothing to sneeze at! And 2004 for an online journal is great – I recently heard someone claim that blogs were few and far between in 2008!