original url http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Shrine/1684/
last modified 2000-07-22 02:19:33
I am having a ball going through @crystalgeocities (who is doing THE LORD’S WORK) and it’s bringing back all sorts of memories from the years when I was first exploring the internet. I want to draw your attention to:
scented // licorice
Web rings and cliques, you guys. They were a thing, and they were a thing that ended up leading me to some of my oldest internet/fandom friendships.
Through webrings and such, I found the world of online charm clubs– which I feel, outside of the friends *I* have who remember/took part in them, NO ONE REMEMBERS. I would love to be contradicted, so get in my asks if you remember these.
A charm club was, basically, a forum with an extra collecting component. It was mostly social, to meet people and chat about this or that. You’d have basically an avatar that represented you– your charm– and you would collect the charms of others in the club by sending them a trade request. Then you’d save a copy of their charm, and then add it to a charm cabinet or page or whatever, usually hosted on Geocities, and hand-coded in HTML in Notepad.
I think I found charm clubs through Sailor Orion’s Refuge, because the creator, Meghann, was part of a few, and eventually started her own, based on otaku senshi. The Senshi Exchange Club.
Our charms were little sprites of our otaku characters– in the style of the sprites from the SNES game, Sailor Moon: Another Story. I’m Facebook friends with a number of the people I met through the SEC, and I’ve met some of them in person! We’re all now adults and in our 30s, so it’s been awesome to reconnect as we cross paths out in meatspace.
