Blingee.com & Internet Archaeology

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VISIT BLINGEE: blingee.com/
Visit the geocities gallery: geocities.rest...
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Outro Song: "Driving in The Rain" by Timecrawler 82
timecrawler82....
/ @timecrawler82

[@roseivy5956]

I've never heard a sentence that encapsulates my childhood ethos more perfectly than "I got my dad's permission to lie about being 13"

[@lucyfer_the_bat]

​@ville__shut up

[@wingedlionn]

personal favourite blingee is of miku in alt clothes captioned "you can be emo and catholic... - father micheal"

[@thewitchbasket]

I looked it up and oh my god it's glorious

[@arrinletourneau]

@ville__ What does that even mean? Stop huffing shit bro, you make no sense.

[@zanks794]

@ville__ Weren't you supposed to be fighting cyberbullying before, or are your spam comments so generic I'm mistaking you for another user?

[@blue-3430]

@ville__are you 12 years old

[@xtosssxts1032]

​@ville__spoko, ale nikt nie pytał.

[@Noreen_Ni_Riain]

Blingee feels like the internet equivalent of gel pens and I refuse to elaborate on this

[@kieransky]

I 100% agree

[@Khotetsu]

This is too accurate

[@Robiness]

Glittery gel pens for sure

[@wrenmassey6876]

You don't have to, it makes so much sense

[@zehkiel8018]

You don't need to. I feel this

[@DasSpaceAce]

Oh so *that's* where everyone got their sparkly gifs. Also, LOVE the old potato camera

[@twotruckslyrics]

picmix ❤❤

[@beepboop9742]

@@twotruckslyrics omg a fellow user of picmix =D

[@catboydiluc]

@@twotruckslyrics picmix gang 💪

[@twotruckslyrics]

@ville__ oh ive seen you before 👀why are you still trying this??

[@gaywalllbiter]

Dont want to reply to him but i literally iust saw him in the comments of jarvis and drews videos too! Hes everywhere and his channel never grows and everyone knows not to feed the troll. At this point i wonder if he is a bot?? ​@twotruckslyrics

[@Ghost-lt4sf]

Manifesting that this video helps foster a blingee revival 🤞🤞🤞🤞

[@evergreen9927]

seriously someone needs to create an alternative that can run without flash. surely thats possible,,,

[@cryptidcutiecosplay]

Idk what we can do to push for that but God do I need it

[@stupidass69420]

I’ve been having my own blingee revival 😭 i absolutely love scouring blingee and putting all the pngs in my art!

[@firenzeval]

@@evergreen9927 picmix??

[@raxzity]

@@evergreen9927 its existed for about a decade and its called picmix

[@7PMNewz]

Blingee speaks to me in such a violently strong way. They’re just SO funny to me I have like twenty different Bingee images of Sasuke from Naruto for objectively no reason.

[@asterisk5054]

you're so real for this. blingee + naruto is peak 00s nostalgia

[@metalgearsausage]

I love that you filmed this on a Tamagotchi

[@dado__]

My mother is over 70, and grew up in another country that had a revolution and became democratic/started modernizing way back when she was 25. The last time we visited there, she expressed the same nostalgia people here have for old, decrepit webpages, a sadness of truly never being able to reclaim what it was like to be there. It's an old feeling that's been updated for the modern age.

[@kakonthebed]

Do you mind me asking which country? My mother is Zimbabwean, so she often says similar.

[@dado__]

@@kakonthebed Portugal, it was very agrarian and backwards in so many ways under fascism. For instance, the government refused to relinquish their colonies while also resisting modernizing because the colonies were a cash cow. But even though my mom would never unwish the change to a democracy, it's still so different from when she was a child.

[@kakonthebed]

@@dado__ That’s fascinating, I never knew that about Portugal. I did know about their refusal to give up their colonies though, as Southern Africa (where I live) has two ex-Portuguese colonies (Angola & Mozambique). As a result, it’s not uncommon for Portuguese to be offered in schools as a second additional language from Mozambican and Angolan immigrants wanting to teach. Had no idea they were so vehemently fascist though. Always assumed Iberia was more or less unaffected by fascism. What time period? (I could figure this out from your mother’s age, but maths isn’t my strong point)

[@dado__]

@@kakonthebed Both Portugal and Spain were fascist governments from the mid-1930s to the mid-70s. In Portugal, Salazar ruled and then died, and then a few years later the army did a thankfully bloodless coup because they were tired of having to deal with the colonial wars. Since they didn't want to actually rule, elections were held. Spain I know less about, but their dictator Franco made the mistake of selecting the now retired king Juan Carlos I as his official successor, assuming he'd continue a similar absolute rule. Instead, Juan Carlos joined all the groups clamoring for democracy and they instituted a constitutional monarchy.

[@kakonthebed]

@@dado__ Ah! That’s sick, especially the fact that Juan really said “…oh you want me to do a fascism? Oh, uh, well this is awkward…”. Thank you for the impromptu history lesson. From the other side of the world, have a nice day.

[@jrsjr1]

intro punched me in the face w nostalgia

[@f.amadis3338]

I'm currently an anthropology/archaeology student and I've noticed SO much interesting overlap with my field and preserving the internet that I grew up with. In dirt archaeology, you have to worry about things like site destruction/disruption (and how this effects context, if things are in situ or have been disturbed), the way the climate is effecting a site (s it permanently hot & dry? Is it frozen? Is it constantly wet? How has the site been affected by changes in this?), and a myriad of other concerns. We're consistently taught that excavation = destruction of context, and context is key for understanding. You don't have to worry about excavation destroying context in the same way with internet archaeology, but you absolutely still have to be concerned about site preservation. We can glean a lot from context clues, but as you've said, there's only so much you can do! I think it's pretty evocative of the Dark Ages as we watch information go unrecorded, sites be deleted, become broken, lose context completely, etc etc. I'm really interested to see the future of internet archaeology and if it becomes a proper field!

[@SlighlyMacs]

This this this this I’ve been thinking about this a lot also! I feel like digital archeology is going to be huge especially for this 00’s period when there wasn’t really a formula for how we store/archive all of our data. Even the potential for physical archeology of all the lost hard drives, cd’s and floppy’s. Not an archeologist myself but am a speciality technician for restoring analogue tech and I’ve seen a resurgence in 00’s tech. I have all my families photos from the 1920s-00’s and then that 00-2016 is completely lost to old hard drives, missing sd cards etc. The potential for discovering lost data is wild!

[@Vgn1701]

I'm also studying archaeology (specifically Egyptology) and I've never heard the phrase "dirt archaeology" before and I love it xD

[@aegisScale]

I wouldn't be surprised but would be very happy if my university (which is pretty big) started teaching or supporting such endeavors. "Digital Studies" is starting to be taken a lot more seriously.

[@f.amadis3338]

@@Vgn1701 I’ll thank my ANT 101 archaeologist professor for that one, LOL. “Good old fashioned dirt archaeology” were his exact words, I *think* he made the distinction because more and more, archaeology/anthro research can be done in labs and archives rather than necessarily being always out in the field (as I’m certain you know XD I’m such an overexplainer, sorry!) But that’s only my best guess. I love the phrase, it’s so funny.

[@Vgn1701]

@@f.amadis3338 Love your explanations though! And for myself, I haven't even been "in the field yet", I'm only in my second semester now, they won't let me near anything yet xD

[@sapphosmistake1649]

as an early 2000s baby (2002) watching things like this gives me a really weird sort of nostalgia. it's like an era that I was there for but too young to really understand, so I just have a vague recollection of this era through things I vaguely remember from adverts on Jetix and Nickolodeon or teen magazines that I was too young to do anything but look at the pictures. it all feels like a weird dream, or like having seen something through a fisheye lens

[@wolflink4361]

THIS! I was born in 2003 yet all of these early 2000s internet trends feel so familiar yet foreign at the same time. I remember starting to look into these old internet subcultures a few years back and I find the resurgence of them to be so cool. Like I can finally indulge in all the things I missed out on but they all still feel deeply nostalgic despite the fact that I was barely present for them. Especially the music scene, early 2000s music just hits different for me.

[@lordarthur2165]

I understand, I feel the same. I could remember those things, but I was too young to understand how to make them or use them. For me it was a "cool older kid thing". It's funny because to this day, when I think about a pretty popular girl, I think about a typical blonde 2000s girl, because that's what I saw in my childhood in the movies, I guess my brain can't leave 2000s fashion behind lol

[@-ky8qt]

YESSS I'm from 2003 too and I never had the opportunity to interact with these things, but in the same sense of wanting to try what cooler older kids did I want to use these so badddd (specially after seeing a video about how fun it was and how sad it is that's about to disappear 😨)

[@bethanybrookes8479]

Yes! I have so many distinct memories of seeing scene kids that looked larger than life in my mind hanging out around town. Of turning on the computers in school that older kids forgot to log out of and seeing chaotic Web pages open. Or flash based video games that looked equally as chaotic. It all feels like a dream but it's also so ingrained in my head. And it's also kinda vague. I wouldn't even be able to describe it more properly than I already have. I don't remember exactly what the scene kids were wearing, only the general style enough to be able to identify it as scene. I just remember them looking so cool and wanting to be like them when I grew up coz it looked like a really fun way to dress. It's so odd in my brain. And frustrating. I wanna go back just so I can have a better chance of identifying what I was seeing.

[@SykoMuffin]

Same, early 2000s kid here. I remember scene and emo culture and early internet sites as things my friends’ older siblings were into. I’d idolize them and wish I could be just like them when I was older lol.

[@sebastianvazquez2242]

Very worth discussing neocities as a place where people can in fact make websites just like geocities used to be

[@celestialgloam7439]

It was not until this moment that I even noticed they were different. She said geocities in past tense and I literally googled Neocities because I thought it was still around XD

[@WireMosasaur]

neocities is so good!! :) I built my own site to write down all my worldbuilding ideas, and I'm part of an artist webring that has a "random" button. Hitting that button is like a magical portal to another world every time, you never know what you're going to see next!!

[@elwingsmith7352]

I was looking for this comment ! Neocities is really good !

[@n48_art]

neocities is so fun :) currently building the 2.0 version of my website and let’s just say that i got in too deep for a hobbyist 🙃

[@Haugezar]

OOHH neocities!!! I just recently started making my own site there and have been having a blast, I highly recommend people visiting and checking some of the stuff there!

[@RAINBOWEXPLOSIO]

Even though I was almost 6 years old when this was a thing, watching these videos makes it feel like unearthing ancient texts and cultures.

[@dismurrart6648]

As a active internet old person, you aren't that far off. The images she shows really are what it's like. It was so different from now that it basically is like a lost civilization. The games I grew up playing, you physically can't play because Shockwave is dead. You can play clones of them but the originals just don't exist

[@nikonijn]

@@dismurrart6648isnt that even happening for early 2010s kids? like flash dying i.e. oldweb is decaying :-(

[@dismurrart6648]

@@nikonijn oh absolutely. It's just wild to think because even for me, that feels like a dead civilization. It's like there's a glass pane you can't break through. I can clearly remember all of that and can see images from that time, but there's a specific way you can't go back that feels different from other ways life changes.

[@juniperjabber]

same

[@juniperjabber]

@@nikonijn yep, can't even play most classic coolmath or (good) girlsgogames games anymore

[@AlexRide-z7g]

I was born in 2008. I've never seen an internet that wasn't 'corporate' but it feels like it's been getting worse especially in the last few years. Internet archeology feels like reaching back to weirder time, when everything didn't have to fit into a neat 'aesthetic' box. It feels like people on the internet got be more like people, and I want that. I want to be a person.

[@manicmax7909]

If you’re not already, get on tumblr ASAP! I was born in 2003 but didn’t have access to the internet until like 2013 (and even then it was just like Pinterest and KZbin for a long while) so I totally understand how you feel. I got on tumblr about a year ago and it feels totally different from other “social media”. Very fun!

[@katethevampire]

​@@manicmax7909 this! I never used Tumblr in my younger days since i couldn't figure out how it worked but always watched comic dubs for ask blogs and saw art from there. A few years ago I made an account and it's honestly the most fun I've had on socal media ever

[@junesm]

@@manicmax7909 I'm also from 2003 and tried to get into Tumblr but like... I really don't get how it works :') Tumblr screenshots were my source of humour my whole teenage years so I thought that's what I would get???

[@willow8783]

Can you imagine the chaos if Tumblr could somehow implement something like this as a feature? Maybe letting you stack animated filters on top of a photo you want to post? It'd be the biggest thing since polls!

[@tea_time_t]

We talk about how the internet "is forever" and "doesn't forget" but truth is, the internet is a medium that is even more temporary than most. Anthropologists talk about how we are going to have a black hole of primary source material because so much of what we write is digital. How many people keep their first-hand accounts of major events on their Facebook or Twitter pages instead of putting them in a journal? As soon as those companies go down, all of those accounts are lost. All that history is lost. Internet Archive is a fantastic project, but it can only do so much. Blingee might be kind of a silly thing, but I love that you used it to talk about this issue. It's something that was once ubiquitous. Everyone had obnoxious blingees all over their myspace pages. Now it's a strange ghost of what it once was, and soon it might not even be that.

[@abbyzoetewey538]

BRB gonna go carve some early tumblr text posts in marble

[@Enjemnsnens]

I cannot describe the type of nostalgia Blingee and that type of glitter art brings me. Like sitting in the computer room, its cold af from AC, its raining out, i’m almost done 7th grade, i’m gonna play Sims 2 later, just got some pink pens, idk my memories of it feel so tangible but I can’t accurately describe them

[@ding1466]

Same except it was a million degrees and and my CRT monitor was slightly broken from a magnet obscuring my webkinz and flash games

[@hamstersandwich9917]

how come you have the ac on and yet it's raining?

[@Enjemnsnens]

@@hamstersandwich9917 because its hot as fuck lol

[@ding1466]

@@hamstersandwich9917 because that’s when the AC works best and gives the coziest of vibes

[@marysnyder9405]

I literally miss my live journal fandoms so much. I tried to visit the old pages because I was searching for a specific fanfic, and I was shattered to realize how many people had deleted their fics from LJ. There used to be 100s of pages on ship pages, and now there's just a handful pf dead links. It makes me so sad.

[@marialauraverso]

omg!! me too :-( i think ppl delete them bc they are very ""cringy" and you know... products of their time but i LOVE READING THEM!! i saved a few favourites on a google docs bc i was just so scared to lose them forever

[@notthebees4961]

I bet the internet archive's 'wayback machine' has them archived

[@marysnyder9405]

@@notthebees4961 I tried. It has them for some fics, but not all of them.

[@DarkMistyDay]

It's awful, I miss them, too

[@partylikeits1066]

LJ was awesome. I remember really resenting tumblr when it started up and people were moving there because I thought it was such a downgrade. And it was!

[@woopvonwoop1133]

I can't imagine blingee without the dancing Snoop gif, it didn't matter what crowd you were in everyone used dancing snoop

[@corn_mann]

13:51 bling bingus? call that a blingus

[@edgaranalhoe7678]

She bling on my bingus till I blingus (i’m sorry)

[@FirstNameBunchANumbers]

5:55 "Fast car" was my partner's first ever internet search! His dad sat with him at their family computer, and he told my partner "You can search for anything on the internet!" "Fast car" gives similar energy as searching "Cute kitten photos" 🙏

[@laurabeaty915]

#1 tracy chapman stan!!

[@MapleMooseMuffin]

Seeing those random anime characters was a punch in the face because those were the faceclaims we used to use on our custom-made roleplaying websites. It's like seeing the high school yearbook photo of someone who died a decade ago

[@coolbabbit639]

crazy analogy dude

[@snowiiiiie]

omg there has to be a way to emulate the blingee look with something like photoshop. In all my teen years I never wanted to make a blingee so much as I do now

[@froggiepie]

there is picmix which doesnt hit quite the same but it’s basically a knockoff blingee!

[@bonnabell9214]

Use to make so many sims 2 and lesbian winx club blingees can’t believe I forgot

[@emmawaters5531]

The "best friends" and "I love you" stamps in the first blingee being lesbian colors is poetic

[@megbarwick2872]

The intro threw out my back, hip, knees, and I couldnt remember where I put my reading glasses 😅

[@cloudsaysthings]

A lot of the internet nostalgia over this stuff for me is tied to lost media and preservation. So much of the old Internet is lost and may never be recovered, and that's deeply tragic. I will forever be grateful for the Internet Archive and lost media KZbinrs for the work they do because of it.

[@Solarn40]

For me, it's Elfwood. A fantasy art site that was one of the biggest back in the 90s, in fact DeviantArt started as a more fandom-focused knockoff of it, and now it's just completely gone. All the art, all the discussions, all the fics, gone forever.

[@SilvarusLupus]

Remember when you could have a background on your youtube page? Yeah...yeah...I miss that

[@nessie-from-earthbound1601]

Man I wished we could still do that

[@SilvarusLupus]

@@nessie-from-earthbound1601 I had a pokemon themed tarot card for mine :/

[@rowannnnnnnnn]

@@SilvarusLupusthat’s sick af, wth

[@AmyJayne1]

in the early days of the internet, my dad was an avid user of a geocities dedicated to paving the earth so people can drive around non stop in their cool hypercars. a simulator he made is actually listed on the front page of the site tho thanks to the death of flash it doesn't work anymore. it was all taken hilariously seriously and it gives me intense tumblr shitposting vibes so I just love that being weird on the online has been around since the dawn of the internet

[@tea_time_t]

Oh my god that's amazing. Your dad would absolutely have done numbers on tumblr.

[@AmyJayne1]

@@tea_time_t that is the biggest compliment that he would never understand but I agree!!! my dad would have been in the goncharov trenches

[@Blaineworld]

reminder to those who wish geocities was still around that neocities exists

[@syntheid]

I was surprised she didn't bring up neocities

[@elwingsmith7352]

Was really surprised too!

[@AppleAltEscape]

Came here to comment this exact thing!

[@azure-mist]

And lots and lots of tools exist to learn HTML and CSS!

[@Blaineworld]

@@azure-mist ooh! for me personally, i started with w3schools. it’s pretty good if you want a quick and interactive explanation of something. but nowadays i typically use mdn, which is better if you’re an experienced coder looking for concise technical details. additionally, many text editors show descriptions of html tags and css properties as you type them. personally i use visual studio code. there are other sites but i do not know how good they are or what their pros and cons are.

[@brodenby]

Blingee must be be preserved in order for the next generation to get inspiration for what the internet can be

[@ladyaz2086]

Just throwing a thank you into the void. Spent the last day trying to get into my old Blingee account. Got in. There was a Blingee of a selfie with a very dear friend who has since passed. It brought back so many memories. Thanks

[@rhus36]

Definitely misread the thumbnail as “KAWK” which seemed like a strange turn

[@voidkingofswing]

Dude same

[@glenmorrison8080]

Bro same

[@sillylittlecourtjester]

SAME

[@sailorpanda]

Me too lol

[@JesseBakerH]

I LOVE BLINGEE GIFS, it's crazy on Discord how many NEW Blingee GIFs you can find in fandoms. I've definitely sent Better Call Saul/Breaking Bad Gifs with each of the characters COVERED in sparkly bbg gifs. I've wondered how they did it. I hope someone someday archives all of the "Blingee" transparent overlays and makes an open source Gif creator with it

[@thepokemonqueen]

i love how a lot of in-built gif search bars in discord, messenger etc still have blingee/geocities/early internet-esque gifs i can send to my friends

[@KatherineE47]

I was a blingee user from 2012- to about 2019 and I know people remember it as a kind of a silly funny sparkly website to personalize your own photos but genuinely there was some amazing art made on that website, like those fanatsy landscapes you showed but about 100x more detailed. I got pretty good at graphic design in middle school because of it. This video inspired me to go look at my old account and all the memories came back. I'd be so sad if it went away, I miss all my friends from it! I met so many nice people there. Blingee was a super important part of my life for a while, Thanks for the video Strange!

[@sarahsimpson8077]

How did you make friends on blingee? Was there a way to message people or comment on their blingees or something? Never used the site myself so I thought it was just the image editing part!

[@Capt_Sunfish]

@@sarahsimpson8077 I didn’t use the image editor in its hayday, but I was obsessed with it in 2021 and you could add people as friends, you could like other peoples blingees, and I think there was a forum too!

[@spicysalad3013]

flash player being deleted was one of the most devastating blows the internet has ever suffered, it should be criminal tbh

[@taylorgabbey2371]

My friends and I do PowerPoint parties (it's where you make a PowerPoint on whatever you want and present it to your friends. You know, for fun), and for my last one I absolutely loaded the slides with as many Blingees as I could find on Google images. My friend had to show all of the glittering gifs on her giant flatscreen TV. It was glorious

[@wyrmghost]

This is why I’m learning to code and working to make my own neocities website

[@almosteverywhere]

the bit about the internet nostalgia and the rise of scene kids as a way for newer generations to preserve and experience that really hit hard. i recently fell down a rabbit hole with what is essentially my country's ancient version of wordpress that is slowly dying out and reading these people's shitposts, these people who have probably forgotten about leaving such an integral, raw, beautiful piece of themselves behind on the internet, it really made me fall in love with internet history. slowly i started to mourn all the sites i couldn't reach anymore. i even made my own blog and it really was a joy to (try to) code a haphazard blog template myself. it's such a validating yet voyeuristic look inside these people's lives and in a world where everyone's too busy being the tiktok moral police all the damn time, going through those blogs and reading about these awkward, ugly emotions and genuine vulnerability really does feel like uncovering a hidden treasure.

[@rollo_linwood]

This reminds me of Flipnote AMVs. All of those are all archived, and that's soooooo awesome and nostalgic

[@strangeaelurus]

People are still animating stuff on flipnote!

[@rollo_linwood]

@@strangeaelurus Yes I know!

[@goodgood7927]

FLIPNOTE OMG. I loved making those as a kid and in 2013 I decided to check out hatena for the first time, but by that point it had already shut down D:

[@NeichaUnagi]

We had blingees in switzerland too. The french speaking part didn't use myspace as much we used something equivalent called Skyrock. I remember visiting so many blogs literally littered with blingees.

[@jesseleiker4228]

Maybe its just bc ive been doing a lot of collage art recently, but blingee feels like digital collage. And the fact that it used flash so things could move makes it feel right as a digital collage.

[@amoureux6502]

I've been doing a lot of collage art as well and I thought the same thing!!

[@hatemteirelbar9510]

But what you don't know is that his real name is Strange Aeons....

[@lavandulaefolia]

woahhh

[@imjustroleplaying]

​@ville__ it's a reference to a different video

[@reid3031]

​@ville__his*

[@naypinay]

@ville__ fake fan...

[@medd-lee]

oh my gods, blingee Edit; there's an image I can't delete from one of my accounts that is a blingee I made when I was around 9 - during the peak popularity! This is a fascinating deep dive I have a personal connection to. I was so confused why I couldn't see comments but then I looked and I saw this video 10 seconds after upload. Wild!

[@no-rm9wg]

lmaoooo not the one true media intro

[@thishandleisntalreadytaken]

the crunchy video quality is delicious

[@Panthersoup]

I think about the sort of internet nostalgia you're getting at here a lot. I'm 30 and I've been extremely online since I was 9 or 10 years old. I'm also the kind of person who likes to reminisce a lot, like look through old journals and such, and it sucks that so much of the internet that defined my adolescence is just gone. The Warrior Cats forum I met my best friend on in 2007 was deleted a long time ago and only a few Wayback Machine snapshots remain. So many memories I wish I could go back to but just can't.

[@Xiporah]

Way back in 1997 when I was in high school we were taught how to make a very simple web page using a template. The template they use had a really weird looking guy on it so instead of replacing it with my own picture I just wrote it as if it was a pet page about my pet cannibal Gunther.

[@snowbeast4463]

This makes me want to go back to Livejournal and roleplay as a 2003 emo.

[@coolbabbit639]

~pokes u~ Rawr o.0

[@SamTheTired]

I remember the transition from Sixx to Biersack and I remember the transition from Biersack to Black. I shall be here forever

[@Setashi]

I'm genuinely just shocked that the site is (kind of) still up after all of these years.

[@blepkittys]

the fragility of the internet and digital information in general is something very rtmi. fun fact if you look at old KZbin videos through the way back machine you can see comments disappear - a video that had 20k comments now may only have 8k. not sure why (I assume account deletion in the early 2010s). while it’s not necessarily artistic or crafted like websites and such, and more likely just considered “noise”, I find it interesting - a slice of communication just gone.

[@kaito-dimension-purple]

this reminds me of how if you look at old youtube videos now you see where the creator of the video has replied to old comments, apart from the comments theyre replying to are all just vanished

[@Robiness]

Everything stays on the internet forever and simultaneously everything is fragile and can cease to exist anytime

[@10puppyluv]

I still live in the neighborhood I grew up in and started taking my dog for a walk around it. I was walking by one of the schools i spent a lot of time at both attending it and just playing around and near it. I caught a glimpse of a field and a tree line and thought something that youd see on a shit post on tumblr "i no longer know this place but i still dream of it"

[@stuco211]

Blingee reminds me of the last time I customized my myspace page. At the time Mega64, an old group of content creators, decked their's out in rainbows and tacky gifs to make it as flamboyant as possible which inspired their fans to follow suit. I spent HOURS perfecting mine. It looked like the rhinestone aisle of a craft store was celebrating pride. True myspace art. Then my dad, who's a little old fashioned in some regards, tried to add me. I didn't want to explain myself so I panicked so hard I deleted my myspace. Years and years later I'd come out as pan and everything was cool, but I have to wonder if him seeing my layout a decade earlier gave him time to come to terms with it before I even figured it out.😂

[@allysonbroyles]

The sadness around dead websites is so real, I miss Polyvore and all of the creations I made there everyday

[@bingonight1504]

I love looking up blingee anime angel gifs on discord for that very *specific* nostalgia. Getting to use HTML to design my Neopets profile with lots of glittery gifs was also huge for me from that time

[@jaceybenton]

The innocence of googling cats is the best part of my own search history

[@myhandsaslanguage]

This video was a delight. The internret being hard to archive is one of the reasons I've started downloading and printing memes and fanfics. For my enjoyment now and nostalgia later.

[@Chameleonradio]

As an archives/library student, digital preservation, especially of complex objects like websites and games is so important! But I do think that it is important to be realistic. We can't preserve everything, but we can turn that nostalgia into making new things that capture the good parts of the old.

[@Chameleonradio]

Also thanks so much for the pointer on Flashpoint archive! I am actually doing a project on flash game preservation and it was so hard to find up to date information on "traditional" sources, even in institutions that have active digital preservation programs.

[@solrose591]

I think the fact that tumblur is still customizable, and I alone control what I see is why it's so appealing to me

[@Lizard_Tongues]

although there is still tumblr, there’s also neocities!! i never used geocities, but from what i can tell, it’s pretty much the same thing! i’ve been having a lot of fun making my own website and exploring other’s websites :3

[@theflotingheadproduc]

So THIS is where all those images were coming from back then? This is really cool to see, thank you! I hope digital archivists are already on the case with preserving this slice of internet culture, it's worth keeping around.

[@LiamNayru]

I'm a web designer and I'm determined to make every website I design look as fun and wacky as possible - BRING BACK CLASSIC INTERNET

[@theheadlesshat5887]

truly one of the things i appreciate most on tumblr (apart from the whole subculture of injokes etc) is that to this day i can fully customize blog themes!! it's literally so fun to spend an afternoon picking the exact colors i want and how posts and notes and tags are displayed and what pages i can make in it... also for all its technical problems in literally every other feature i do think they've hit a perfect spot in terms of (beginner) user friendliness for this: if you know html you can do a lot, but even if you don't you can use a base theme from someone else and still have it turn out very personal and customized - and, in true tumblr "we're gonna keep the old internet Community Vibes going" fashion, a lot of people who do know html share their base themes freely so! a nice upgrade/spiritual successor from geocities in this sense

[@soyjoyy]

I remember when we used to share these via Bluetooth, since everyone had either a flip phone or a touchphone (remember those? I had one💅), so no Internet. Bedazzled butterflies and hugging teddy bears with metric shit tonn of sparkles were like a tokens of friendship.

[@thecherryblossompie]

Oh my god. I just logged into my old blingee account I hadn’t touched since 7th grade… all the anime and vocaloid edits… Honestly, it really reminds me of a time where I made and posted fun stuff for myself just because I enjoyed it. Even if only two people liked it, I still made stuff I was proud of.

[@cassieRD]

I was a teen in the mid 2000s, and I have to say it was the best time to grow up in. I loved Myspace, emo, blingee, bebo, msn messenger, limewire. It took minutes to dial up to the internet, and we always fought when mum wanted to use the phone. Ohhhh, I miss it so much 😢

[@rachaelblacksmith]

Blingee is just early Internet scrapbooking and I'm here for it.

[@Catboya3ther]

9:45 this actually means a lot to me, I went and screen recorded this part of the video. I’m 17, same birth year as Blingee and the Black Parade album. Suuuuper obsessed with 2000s internet culture and scenemo. I love the way you described it as a form of rebellion, I really connect with that

[@thornwalker8970]

As a French who grew up in the 2000's, I didn't know about Myspace... But we had Skyblogs. And oh my god, the blingees were everywhere on Skyblogs too. When I look at them I remember all the time I spent on my fanfic/fanart blogs throughout elementary and middle school. It does actually feel nostalgic... Even worse considering Skyblog closed last year and everything was deleted :') Fortunately I managed to go back and take screenshots of my blogs beforehand, lol. Thank you Strange for the ride!!

[@littlemsterious991]

the sadness i feel watching this and knowing that I will never be able to be a true 2006 internet user is just they took this from us :(

[@maxinecampbell4702]

this level of grief over the old things on the internet is so real… I used to play in all those interactive worlds like club penguin and kung fu panda world and animal jam and Disney fairies world and they’re all gone now 💔

[@AvaMaster]

this made me SO emotional omg. you scrolling through blingee reminded me so much of being a kid on forums. your bit about internet nostalgia feeling worse was so right.

[@tukanica6903]

Watching you have fun was so cute < 3 When Blingee was popular I was just a child learning English (it's not my first language), so I always thought that when I'll learn the language, I'd be able to use Blingee :') Years later, here we are...

[@livelollobotomy]

0:03 immediately im vomiting WHY WAS THERE NO TRIGGER WARNING FATHER STRANGE I WASNT READY

[@ingridlewis1918]

My heart fully stopped at the Andy Sixx stamps… absolute blast from the past ahhaha

[@person2225]

Yeah I’m really glad you got me into tumblr a while back. After having been a fandom girlie for like 10 years and somehow not really getting into tumblr, your video on gimmick blogs finally made me reactivate my ancient account. And it came at the perfect time to get back into a fandom I used to be in (the phandom, now that Dan and Phil are like back) and I’m really enjoying it and am so glad to no longer be on fandom twitter. So thanks :)

[@giulianawladessamanca4126]

Strange is overflowing with joy in this one. Blingees are love, blingees are life.

[@Eeby-onmy-Deeby]

I need a blingee account NOW!! This is literally what I do with my photos with picsart minus the gifs.

[@aleamilr]

I feel like the pinterest collage feature could capture a feeling similar to this but modernized.

[@ThatOneIrishFurry]

The "export to bebo" button shooting me in my nostalgic heart People in my school would not stop talking about bebo in the mid 2000s

[@goranisacson2502]

Blingee, livejournal and geocities... so much ancient lore in here. So much lost. I had a deep dive into my email-account, finidng old livejournal conversations and being smacked in the face with who I was more than 15 years ago. I can only hope we'd still be able to get along.

[@maciejturek7325]

Your talk about early Internet nostalgia reminded me about my favorite browser game about dragons that has been shut down for over 10 years. All of the dragons have been created by the people who were playing the game (the looks were chosen on a forum contest). It wasn't mist exciting but I absolutely adored it, even tried to get into the contest at the age of seven. The creator of the game tried to bring it back few years ago but unfortunately he died prematurely and all the effort to restore it has been shut down

[@spookybookworm3063]

Oh, "Smoki Nightwood"! I remember making eye-bleed inducing backgrounds for my dragons and getting super hyped about the fights (even though it was just text appearing in lines between two static dragon pictured). Good, simpler times 🥲

[@MaxsFriends]

As a Nebraskan, hearing Nebraska referenced by anyone, let alone a non american, is crazy. I was just punched in the face by Steve from Nebraska

[@Cha0s.Bring3r]

Me too man

[@lilyawoodburn]

That first blingee you made gave me huge Lisa Frank vibes, which is in itself another throwback for me. This video was a wonderful blast from the past!

[@Epiales06]

15:47 YOU FOOL! HES BACK TO BIERSACK (outside of his solo project but he hasn’t really don’t anything with that for a while lol)

[@sigmatheta9399]

I think a lot of it has to do with how the internet was back then too. Kids now have gotten tired of the corporate look every major website has, Websites kids used to go to now being long gone, hell even things like 3D Pinball or solitaire no longer being added to newer windows systems. They miss the freedom they had now being gone to corporate blandness. This lead to them finding and rediscovering things and are doing their best to remake them in their own flair. The amount of blingee-inspired photos i've seen have absolutely skyrocketed during these years and its easy to see why. We're basically experiencing a second boom of this stuff like weve seen those 30-20 years ago

[@tokiettacri]

a few years ago i wanted to make an art project with blingee because i think it's absolutely incredible as a website and because i'm very nostalgic of the simpler times... now that i know that finding a flash emulator will get me back to bing able to create w my account i will definitely do something. thank you for making this video

[@ShayBot3000]

I just need to say that watching you blingee after a shift that lasted way too long made me feel so much better. The shot of nostalgia directly into my eyeballs really almost floored me. I loved it

[@Cha0s.Bring3r]

Ribcage by Andy jump scared me so hard ngl I haven’t thought about that song since middle school

[@ForestFairy]

Is this how we got all these sparkly fairy gifs? :o OMGGGGGGG Thank you I was wondering about those!

[@Mandavee]

Blingee and photobucket were the GOATS of the Neopets custom pet page. Learn all my basic HTML from coding those pages. It was just dozens of gifs of Gerard Way in a row on a bright red background

[@zashiki_warashi]

i deadass thought the thumbnail said "kawk" so i spent way too long staring at it before it registered in my head that it actually just says "rawr"

[@elipost1703]

I still have one of those blingee banners on my Tumblr blog lmao I love the sparkles they’re camp

[@Scribbled_Death]

I finally watched the Saw movies last year and IMMEDIATELY went to see if there were blingees- and was blessed with seeing so many UwU

[@heyitsheidijay]

Oh this video is truly an international treasure !! It reminds me of how I somehow spent my ENTIRE childhood on those little pixel doll maker websites, where you could click together all the outfit pieces and hairstyles and they all had interesting body proportions and endless Juicy Couture clothes 😂😭 If you ever wanted to do one of these episodes on one of those sites if you somehow got one to work I'd be forever in your debt for the nostalgia hit 😂😭💜 (I think the most popular one was called The Doll Palace, but I found myself frequenting one called Pixelbee and a small niche handful of others 😂)

[@Hannah-173]

THANK YOU i think about these all the time but couldn’t remember their names!! Did you ever play any of the “scene maker” games in the same style but it was like themed “scenes” where you placed decor and little people. The themes were like “pet shop “ or “romantic winter fun” or “gothic house” or things like that?

[@vireoeo4992]

"I don't think, I fully know that." is about to become my new catchphrase

[@MissManicMuffin]

I graduated highschool in 2010. The internet I used before then, the internet I used in college, and the internet now make me feel genuinely unwell with how empty it continues to get. The amount of almost unhealthy nostalgia I have from the early 00s to 2014 sometimes gets to me. I still have my Tumblr account since 2011 and use it actively. That is probably the last active record (Minus the remnants of my GaiaOnline and DA account) I have of my teenagehood. This was a good video.

[@StacyDoodles]

Don't you smack me with GeoCities like that. I wasn't ready.