hello youths! 🥰🫶🏻 story time!
the above pics are from 1997: spring (pic 1) & fall (pic 2) --
(btw -- @blackcr0wking was just over 2 yrs old & already drawing! 🥺🥺🥺)
-- & here is how we got pics of ourselves (ie: selfies; we didn't really call them anything but "OOC pics," haha) online in the 90s:
you got friends to take them (the 1st pic was taken by my friend in her car), or you used, say... a ruler to push the button on yr camera that was precariously set ~just so~ on yr dresser (pic 2.)
you wasted a LOT of film; it was embarrassing asf to bring it to get developed if you were using a standard or those one-time cameras.
then you either had a scanner, a friend with a scanner, or in my case POST-MAILED yr pics to an online friend with a scanner... and THEY got them online for you... & then mailed the OG photos back.
phew.
basically, in the 90s world of BBS's, IRC, & AOL, you were ~hot shit~ if you had photos of yrself online. 💅
ps: pic 2 is one of only TWO shots that remotely worked out, out of 16 sheets of polaroid film.
in the IRC/AOL roleplay days (WoD: VtM/WtA, MtA, VtDA, & just any medieval fantasy) we used ourselves as our char pics ...
(y'all call them PB's now & idk what that stands for? help? 🥺)
& i was playing an old-clan tzimisce vampire named nakita taktarov, lolol, & ohhh, but this was considered a banger photo back then. 😬😬😬
by like 1999 people started using fantasy art or celebrity photos for char pics/PBs, & the bottom of our IC profile page would credit artist/name celeb.
& oh yes -- those who could draw their own characters were highly envied!
& that's how selfies & PBs were in the mid to late 90s.
like, now i wanna get into how long-distance/online friendships worked in the 90s... 🤔
::sighs in autism hyperfix & drops into porch chair; half-heartedly waves random kids off with her cane.::












