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The Antisocial Network: How the 90s Internet Died Like Diaryland (2014)

Before Facebook or Twitter, there was Diaryland. But it’s creator just wasn’t a Zuckerberg and it faded into oblivion.

I used it to catalogue crushes, name-drop serious writers ("my trembling collection of Ibsen plays"), ruminate on body jewelry ("I have been thinking long and hard about this, and…I am going to get my toungue [sic] pierced. "), and most achingly, my own terrible poetry ("you fold your napkin on your head/and recite the Kuma Sutra").My diary died around the time I graduated from high school, but I was reminded of it when I received an email from Smales's mailing list, "Eggpost" last year, and found that it had been hiding online all along, a virtual time capsule of my own angsty writing.The email also made the announcement that Smales was launching his new venture, uncheesy.com, a clearing house for gift ideas that the grown-up diarist might like—plaid shirts, Edison bulbs and space pens.Smales had also set up a Diaryland Twitter account that deadpanned about its own mediocrity in 90s fashion to all of its 88 followers: "Smales's grunge ethos in the eventual Zuckerbergian landscape of user commodification in social media sites, reflects the optimism of the 90s internet: trying to establish a place separate from uniformity and corporate interests.Even now, Diaryland is still adamantly DIY, more in tune with creating your own space without ads or compromise, which in turn means dwindling profits and an undefined marketability.

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