Piczo and Tumblr Nostalgia
If you're a similar age to me (early 30s), there's a decent chance that you've used Piczo or Tumblr, or both.
Piczo, in hindsight, was a bit unhinged. With its glittery graphics, embedded music players and blends of celebrities (like Hilary Duff – who has recently made a comeback!). Everything clashed and it looked terrible, but we were so proud of our pages and couldn't wait to share them with our friends.
Then came Tumblr, where things got a little bit more serious. People found their fandoms, reshared aesthetic photos of New York and poured their hearts out in walls of text. It was a place for reblogging quotes at 1am and feeling understood by strangers who you'd never meet.
What has occurred to me now is that these platforms were actually teaching us something. We were editing HTML before we knew what it was. We were thinking about our identity and figuring out how to present a version of ourselves to the world, from a very young age.
And I think that's why I've been enjoying Bear Blog so much. It's giving me a feeling I haven't had in over 10 years.