The Purple Website That Time Forgot
In the process of testing my site, I made the mistake of googling my own name. Instead of my shiny new platform, the first thing that popped up was a fossil: a WordPress site I built in 1999.
Reader, I had completely forgotten this thing existed. And in that instant, I panicked at the idea that anyone else might stumble across it.
Picture this: a static website, hideous purple background (my feminist colour of choice, apparently), no interactivity, and a tragic photo of me in a red hat and polka-dot dress (see below the only two pictures on my 1999 site). At the time, I thought it screamed “artist.” In hindsight, it whispered “circus intern on day release.”
And then—the blog.
The very first entry began: “I am going to be completely honest about my life…” Which is exactly the kind of sentence that makes your nervous system lock up 26 years later.
The blog had a name: Cibernetic Toilet Literature. Yes. That was my branding. The concept was: this is writing to consume on the toilet, during your most undignified moments. It was self-deprecating—aimed equally at me and the reader—and filled with theatre reviews, art opinions, and long stories about downtown New York parties.
Naive as it was, it actually had readers. This was the late 90s, when private lives were just beginning to leak into public domain, when the social incentive “to be seen and heard” was mutating into an economic one.
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