Goth networking, then and now

Because of Kristi's post about paper journals and letters I've been reminded about how things have changed. I'm in the middle of a new letter, a real, handwritten letter, to my one remaining pen-pal, Carrie. Carrie and I met through a Cure fanzine called "Other Voices" that used to have lots of pen-pal ads in the back. I met a lot of people that way including Suzanne and my ex-wife Dianna. Even then the goth community still managed to interconnect and trade music. We wrote letters to eachother, lots of them. At my peak, around 1990, I had 34 pen pals. In addittion to letters we made tapes for eachother and also traded photographs and little toys. To make new pen-pals we would make these little things called "friendship books" that were small (to fit in an envelope) hand-made books where the creator would write their address and some personal details - basically an ad - on the first page and send it to one of their friends. The friend would fill it out and send it on to someone else and when the book was finally full the last person would send it back to the creator. More often then not the two would end up corresponding. And as the friendship books passed around you could find the odd interesting person from what they wrote in the book. I spent almost all my spare time writting letters. There were even tricks for keeping the cost of postage down (keki, don't tell!) like putting a thin film of white glue on the stamp so the postmarks could be washed off and stamps reused. Another aspect of all this was decorating the envelopes. Sometimes I would spend hours on the envelope alone. When I was in the army my comrades were jealous of the fact that I would receive three or four letters a day, almost always from girls, always beautifully decorated. The quality of the friendship books I would make, the artistry of my envelopes, and the quality of my handwriting (I did, and still do, write with a fountain-pen [sample here] ) attracted pen-pals. In fact Dianna started writing me based entirely on my handwriting.

So now all the same mechanisms are there. The LJ friends list has replaced the friendship book. LJ has also replaced the letters (which were, more often than no just rambles about daily life that you would send off to someone else). Yahoo! Groups and Clubs have replaced the fanzines. Gnutella/Morpheus/Audio Galaxy have replaced trading tapes. But even the best designed website, the most creatively tweaked blog, don't compete with a beautifully decorated envelope and an artfully written.

I should scan some of the envelopes I received. Maybe I'll create a new section on my website for them.