smiling at dogs and babies
Taylor Swift’s music career is testament to the power of lyrics that would’ve otherwise ended up on Livejournal. She’s annoying and a billionaire and I’m annoying and not a billionaire, so I’d like to think this disparity happened because I was on Livejournal. I remember before the homogenization of user interfaces by companies like Meta et al., there were certain conventions that personal websites followed. Navigation bars with links labeled “Me, You, Site,” usually in that order. A “Me” page included a bio of the site owner, a “You” page was populated with half-assed content for the visitor (usually jokes and animated gifs), and a “Site” page featured a site map and webrings. The landing page was typically a blend of a personal blog and site updates. I suspect that these conventions were sometimes followed by brand websites too, so you went to Britney Spears dot com and there was a blog ghostwritten by a proto 23-year-old social media intern. It was clunky though, it wasn’t like Arby’s Twitter account gaining sentience and posting memes. It was the caveman version of the Arby’s Twitter account. I may have a false memory of celebrities having blogs in the early 00s but it’s useful enough to me that I don’t care to verify if it actually happened.
I write this blog for everyone and no one. I have a friend who used to work in PR and she told me that brand accounts received really bizarre messages from people using the DM feature as a diary. I have also seen this phenomenon described by people who partake in it, usually as comments on IG Reels. I suppose I could be writing Kim Kardashian instead of making public posts. Kim Kardashian is everyone and no one. Do you think she smiles at dogs and babies?