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Ten! Years!

March 2nd, 2009 · 1 Comment

In the immortal words of Jeremy Piven in Grosse Pointe Blank: “Ten years! Ten years! Ten! Years!” Yes, believe it or not, I have owned this domain for an entire decade. It’s been home to everything from passive-aggressive collegiate angst to stories of my travel adventures to this YA lit blog.

I had big plans for some new additions in honor of the anniversary — which was, um, actually 2 weeks ago, on Valentine’s Day — but February turned out to be a more complicated month than anticipated.

Anyway, expect some shiny new stuff ’round about the end of March, when I’ve had two whole weeks of spring break to party, procrastinate, and give my blog some love.

In the meantime, some nostalgia. Back in the late 90s, when the web was young, we were so excited about “web journals” and other ways to use the internet for real personal connection. Now, of course, the word “blog” isn’t just some silliness Peter came up with on his website. Oversharing is standard. The lines between private, public, and professional are blurring more and more. The internet is for crass commercialism and research and blah blah blah, but even more than it was in 1999, it’s about people sharing their thoughts for free. (For good and for ill.)

No one will care about this except me (and Jesse), but… what’s my circa-1999 “blog roll” (er, list of bookmarks) up to now?
Fray: True Stories and Original Art
Jesse Chan-Norris
Adam Rakunas
Peter Merholz
Derek Powazek
Molly Steenson
Lance Arthur
Magdalena Donea

And some snapshots from the Wayback Machine of things I loved back in the day:
Maxi
Water
Colors

What were you doing on the web 10 years ago?

Tags: Musing

1 response so far ↓

  • 1 jfpbookworm // Mar 3, 2009 at 9:42 am

    Wow, do I feel old.

    My own 10-year mark arrives Thursday:

    Now, though, I’m planning on copying Jesse’s and Sam’s and Sam’s and Jarrett’s sites and just posting the occasional observation for the world to see. Not that the world’s really looking, of course–I doubt these will ever be read by people I don’t already know. Of course, given that people I do know might read these, perhaps I shouldn’t mention other people by name. I have to remember that, unlike an e-mail “journal,” anyone I mention (or anyone who knows them) could be a potential reader, and while I don’t mind sharing things about myself, I should respect the privacy of others. I’ll try to find a middle ground there.

    My first journal succumbed to bit-rot a long time ago, but I moved everything over to my page at Columbia. That’s dead too, but still around thanks to the Wayback Machine. (I wish it’d archived my essay on liability of moderators in online forums, though.)

    Looking back, I’m amazed at how much and how often I wrote in that first year, when these days I can go months without posting anything. Some of that is that I had a lot more free time, some of it that I was more open about my life, some of it was that, while a lot of people at Brown had started doing the “web journal” thing, it was still shiny and new and a way for a recovering shybie to connect with “IRL” people.

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