________ ________ ________
2024-04-04 / \/ \/ / \
/ __/ /_ _/
in the mid-seventies, we saw the first / _/ / /
steps into long distance "online" dating, a \_______/_\___/____/\___/____/_
haphazard message in a bottle using VHS tape / \/ \/ / \
and CRT. / _/ /_ _/
/- / _/ /
while I was talking with bstuf tonight on \________/\________/\___/____/
tomasino's Jitsi server I was trying to find
the right background video to have playing on the CRT I've been using as a
television so when I catch it in my peripheral vision or in a photo it looks
correct. sifting through the virtual bins of YouTube talking heads, live girls
on camera, shopping networks, music videos and VHS rips I got distracted from
my plan to sort stickers into boxes and instead became fixated on the idea of
video dating and, more importantly, the mountains of video tape that must
exist or have had existed to facilitate the video dating scene.
I can't imagine it was a bustling industry but it was an industry
nonetheless, people making videos of themselves describing their lives, loves,
fears, in the hope that their message would float across the ocean of head-
noise and TV static and land safely on shores where someone compatible with
them, someone to shine a light on them, someone to hold their hand and end
their loneliness, might find their message and respond.
where have all the tapes gone? the boxes of awkward 15 minute reels of
excitement and hope and desperation and nervousness, a candid snapshot of the
history of the brutally warm heart of generation X, where are they buried?
