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 worksEmotional marks buddy icons that communicate feeling through explicit words, symbols, and expressive color pairings like hearts, exclamations, and repeated sentiment phrases. In many examples, the mood cue sits in short text blocks more than in realistic facial detail, which stays clear at small scale.
![Animated pixel art displays multiple variations of 'If you love me' text in red and dark blue with bracketed phrases like [say it] and (show it) in red, all on white background.](/image/b58febfb9eea7a1b5a0e1247fb888a4ab0796cdfaa2f617386724762dbc5e959)
