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 worksText I features buddy icons built around short lowercase “i” phrases, often including heart and star symbols as part of the lettering itself. The same text family appears in pink, black, or cyan fields, with small shifts in bar placement or spacing that change the icon’s punch in small sizes.
![Pixelated text 'I luv Nick Jonas =]' on bright pink background with cyan heart and cyan dot cluster animations.](/image/cc9545e864f47c001e7775356ae7bffa57463c6ecbdac1e900b21ac243ac8104){kind=small}
![six pixel-art icons showing "i [heart] you" with varying heart and text colors across frames](/image/f2ad6e03046ae09270b1f0aa317b2f11e7b9940928adafa47481ed56c0140ba9){kind=small}
