Hello hello (´｡• α΅ •｡`) So, this is a bit of a random post. I was going through old image files on my hard drive looking for stuff to make this silly edit of my coord photo and ended up taking a trip down memory lane. I hope you enjoy reading my little early 2000s internet anecdote! This is right around the time I was discovering goth culture and lolita fashion, and was experimenting with wearing different clothes and listening to all kinds of different types of music.
JSK: Atelier Pierrot
Socks: Moi-mΓͺme-MoitiΓ©
Accessories: Moi-mΓͺme-MoitiΓ©
Boots: Metamorphose
Back in the day when piracy was rampant and streaming services were in their infancy, my friend ran a hugely popular website where you could download thousands of albums, video games, TV shows, movies...you name it. The site had an online streaming radio station. It was never huge - maybe a couple hundred listeners at most, whereas the rest of the site received hundreds of thousands of hits. In the
early 2000s there were tons of tiny underground online radio stations
for every niche genre imaginable. I still listen to a few (anyone remember Sanctuary Radio?) but most of them are long since defunct. I miss them...the little communities that popped up around these websites were fun and cozy places to be.
I was a DJ on the radio station and a moderator on the website for a while. We had a live chatbox, forum, mIRC channel, and Ventrilo server. I was super active on the site and as a DJ so I ended up making friends with a lot of people there. I was quite shy and cagey about my identity because it wasn't normal to use your real name and face online yet, so I went by bunch of different screen names...I forget most of them by now but I often used Mystic Crystal, Cosmic Butterfly, and Cyberfaerie777 or Firefaerie777 (we really need to bring 2000s-era screennames back into style!). I did foolishly reveal the city I was living in and ended up with a creepy guy trying to meet up with me for months on end because he "liked my voice." Oddly enough I ended up finding him on MySpace a couple of years later by sheer coincidence and it turns out he was like 10 years older than me. Yikes.
Despite running into the occasional creep, I had a great time interacting with the other users on the site. It's been 20 years so of course I've lost contact with most of them, even though I've spotted a few on social media. I still talk to some of the other DJs and listeners occasionally; even met up with a few in person! We had a close-knit little group of friends. I remember making matching forum avatars and signature tags for our group that we used on every forum we joined together.
I played a ton of Japanese and European electronic music; mainly trance,
breakcore, trip-hop, drum & bass, happy hardcore, and eurobeat, with a couple
of techno J-pop remixes tossed in. I really loved playing the Ayumi Hamasaki
remix albums, Kotoko, DJ Mystik, and BlΓΌmchen. I also had a few days where I would only play anime music. Not what you would expect from me, right? (´ ∀
` *) I actually really liked electronic music at the time, and still do. My first real introduction to electronic music was probably hearing Eiffel 65 on TV. I was obsessed with Need For Speed 2 and System Shock 2, which were known for having really good techno and DnB-based soundtracks.
I was constantly combing through Soulseek and obscure blogs to try and dig up interesting new stuff to play. It was relatively easy to get ahold of imported Japanese music CDs so I would buy them to rip to MP3 and then stream them on the radio or upload them to the site to share with others. I had made friends with someone on DeviantArt who made a lot of abstract 3D renders for indie electronic artists' album covers and flyers, so I learned a bit about it through him.
I was also online friends with a few cybergoths and rivetheads (in retrospect they were really just kandi kids who wore black PVC) who also got me interested in their music. And of course, I played a lot of DDR and Para Para at the arcade - there was a really cool arcade here that had a ton of Japanese import games. I skipped school a lot so I could go play at the arcade with my friends. Sorry mom!
Anyway, I didn't end up doing it for long, but it still remains a really fond memory for me. The experience introduced me to so much cool music that I otherwise wouldn't have discovered. I still love electronic music to this day - I unironically enjoy techno and you will pry my Eiffel 65 CDs from my cold, dead hands ✧ (ΰΉ •̀ γ― •́ΰΉ) Thank you for reading this little anecdote from my life! If people like reading them then I have lots of inconsequential little stories like this one to share.
[Current Music: Alice Deejay - The Lonely One]
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