In the Year of our Lord of COVID Issue #19 I’ve Got Receipts
Weight: 316.4
Days in lock down: 402
Mood: Nostalgic
For the last few weeks, I’ve migrated all of my website empire unto a single site. I ditched the profesh website (lisarabey.com) because fuck them bitches. I cleaned up exitpursuedbyabear.net for the first time in a zillion years (okay four). I forwarded a bunch of other domains to EPBaB so whatever domain you may have had in the past, now all goes to the same location.
We go back to the beginning:
I’ve been keeping a diary online since, officially, 1998. I preempted Wil Wheaton by four years (2002) and dooce.com by two (2000).
(December 1998; simunye.org. Hand coded.
Since I had just started July of that year, you'll note I only have a few months listed.)
My online journal started earlier than that as I have pieces that were published on GeoCities dating back to 1995 but they were published haphazardly. In 1998, I had a platonic crush on a girl at work (we worked at an ISP natch) who owned her own domain and was keeping a regular journal of her life so I thought I would do the same. Buying domains in the early days of the internet as we know now was expensive and a tedious process. Once I got everything sorted up and running, I was on a path that took me through some crazy shit.
(January 2001; modgirl.net. Hand coded.)
What did I write about? Everything
(January 2003; modgirl.net Hand coded.)
The updates of these pieces were woven in other pieces. To wit: I left SF in ‘99. Paul and I split up in ‘02. The family who owned D3buck’s S0d F4rm tried to sue me for libel. The boy I was deeply in love with is now a scary libertarian and his wife sells doTerra. I’m now stable and I’ve stopped trying to have threesomes and drinking my way through the week.
(I also gave up smoking 12 years ago and along with being surprised at surpassing the age of 40, I never saw that one coming either.)
(February 2007; modgirl.net. Wordpress.)
I also wrote about my jobs, my lovers, my escapades. I wrote about being crazy and its ramifications. I wrote when I was manic, and I wrote when I was depressed. Some of my writing is very, very good and some of it is awful.
I wasn’t afraid of my life to be out in the open. I suppose as someone who spent most of their high school years and early 20s an introvert and painfully shy, the internet offered something much more than I could ever get while I was living in a town I despised. (I despised it so much, I moved back three times since I first left in 1997. Now Grand Rapids is a happening city and you’ve guessed it, I want to move back.) I got addicted to IRC in 1994 because I could be anything I wanted to be, and no one knew any better. The stigma and pain of bullying and sexual harassment were long gone. I could be a strong independent woman of the ‘90s and no one could take me down ever again.
(February 2009; shesgotplans.net. Wordpress.)
Writing online seemed like a natural progression. I could build who I saw myself to really be and live my truth as the youths say.
I never saw anything wrong with advertising my life online. In the beginning, it was vaguely anonymous. I never used my last name and never used the last names of the people I talked about. I was vague about places I worked at. No matter how careful I was at the time, some people got mad that their lives were open to the public. I didn’t care. Your life intertwined with mine even for the briefest of moments and you don’t have control over what happened to me. (But I did not disclose secrets because I’m not that much of an asshole.)
Now I’m more careful. People have nicknames and I never talk about what I do for a living, where I work, or talk shit about my co-workers like I used to. (But fuck you, Queen Bee. I’m glad you’re leaving.) Once I didn’t care what people knew about me and now because of doxxing and stolen identities, I’m more careful of what I say.
(February 2014; exitpursuedbyabear.net. Wordpress.)
I miss not truly giving a shit.
I’ve been writing online for over 20 years and you’re probably asking yourself, why don’t you know who I am? Good question. I don’t know SEO well, I don’t hang out in a lot of popular communities, and I don’t have a lot of connections. There have been choice public instances but those lead to online bullying, harassment, and near doxxing. For a not too shabby nobody, I have nearly 3000 followers on Twitter but I don’t count them because most of them are from library land and fuck them bitches.
(February 2019; exitpursuedbyabear.net. Wordpress.)
Four years ago, I transitioned from a website to a newsletter because I saw blogs were no longer happening anymore. “CONTENT IS IT," but content has changed as people have moved to insta and the tiktoks. No one wants to read anymore; they just want bright and shiny pictures and videos to fill up their lives. Our attention span is shorter. What’s the point of describing a trip to Europe when you can post pictures and videos to show what the viewer is missing?
(April 2021; exitpursuedbyabear.net. Wordpress.)
(We also need to acknowledge OnlyFans and other fan sites for the sexuals because those are hopping, too. We can thank JenniCam (circa 1996) for being the grandmother of this movement.)
But interestingly, everyone has a newsletter now, so the written word is not completely dead but it’s not the same as it was all those years ago. I read somewhere that for many popular newsletters, a built-in audience follows the writer who more than likely has worked in long term media with pieces in large publications or they have some kind of connection for some reason or another. The content tends to be journalistic pieces and not stripped to the bone though. Those of us who are the poor relations are struggling because all we can offer is our mind, heart, and soul and to invest in that type of gift can be exhausting because you don’t see the writer’s innermost thoughts in a six second video but you’ve just read an in depth analysis of an event. It also seems with so many people being open about their own struggles, maybe reading about others does not offer comfort but panic. Who's to say?
Cleaning up my website brought out this bout of nostalgia and flipping through the Wayback Machine looking for old sites late last night nailed that nostalgia deep into the feels . You’ll note I’m #onbrand with the aesthetic of the sites over the years. Fuck images, video, and sound bites, README.txt.
As I near my 50th birthday next year (oh god, what the fuck), I realise no matter how small my little newsletter world is, I’ll keep on being here. I’m an online cockroach still writing about my life because just as I knew all those years ago, if what I say touched even one person, it was all worth it.
Wonderful Thing
It's pretty obvious this week: the internet.
Interesting Things (or things to buy)
I’ve added computer parts and electronics (Chromebook, Google Mini, and so on) to my Pops collection on eBay.
A friend reached out that they were into buying the TomboyX bras I mentioned a couple of issues back and wondered if I had a referrer code. Turns out I do! ($20 off your first order!)
Links to Read That are Not (Terribly) Depressing
(slow week)
As always, don't be an ass. Wear a damned mask.
lisa x
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Image depicting the black death in a book by French chronicler
and poet, Gilles Li Muisis (1272 - 1352). Artist unknown.