From the archivist
It started with a game that needed a few authentic AIM icons. Then I had 1,000. Then 10,000. At some point, I had a buddy icon problem.
Read how this happenedYou made it this far
You have scrolled past 1,024 buddy icons, so I have some suspicions. My blog is where the other shiny digressions end up.
Subscribe to Shedletsky.comA language of tiny pictures
A picture barely 50 pixels wide, sitting beside an AIM screen name, could announce a mood, a fandom, an inside joke, or who someone wanted to be that day.
Read the short historyRecovered from the early web
Buddy icons survive in old directories, fan sites, downloadable packs, and web archives. The archive preserves the original files, groups known copies, and records where each one was found.
How the archive worksAffirming buddy icons center supportive messages and encouraging wording, often paired with star or heart motifs and warm gradients. The positivity is carried by repeated text plus soft bright symbols, so meaning is readable even when the figure is minimal or stylized.
![[Y-C] xoxo STOP HATIN' text with red heart symbols; four show sequential animation of hearts changing from one to two](/image/75189590ac2f1c3a14e796c094f085f7834c2a89a6268ec3904de68d1a396e5b){kind=small}
