November 7th, 2011 / 5:35 pm
 Random & Roundup

A Survey of 90s + Early-Internet Love Poetry

    Since I’m only 23, it’s hard for me to understand love without the Internet. Probably all the times I’ve been in love, the Internet has been involved. Let’s consider some poems from the 1990s and early 2000s that feature love.
    From a design standpoint, many of these poems suffer and thrive within the limitations of early web design utilities. There are strange boarders, floral .gifs, and extensive breaking with conventional wisdom on fonts.
    In terms of how these poems make me feel, there is a note of desperation and of severe emotion in these works. They seem spiritual – and often are explicitly religious. They are from a time before online dating was common. They are from a time before Facebook. Electronic detachment was fresh.
***
    The theme of not being able to see the object of one’s love is common. The notion of falling in love with someone outside of any physical contact may have been somewhat lost as the Internet evolved into a realm of intensive photo and video content sharing. Some of the purity of online text communication has been lost. Command line direct to the heart.  Maybe these people who found love on the Internet were the only people to understand the true soul2soul love of two people who have connected minds, but not connected bodies. Maybe they are the first and best Internet generation. They are the fearless explorers, going inside computers to find themselves. They are the forgotten idealists of Internet romance.
    Perhaps the most visible collection of these poems exists at http://www.netpoets.com/poems/cyberlov/ where you can browse through a nice blue beveled layout. Another great spot is http://www.cyberlove101.com. Many of my favorite poems however, are only found searching obscure .gif collections. Picsearch.com has one of the only image search advanced-functions that allows users to see only animated .gifs in results. I recommend everyone do a little research of their own.
   Anyways. My OKCupid SN for NYC area is loungelizard97.

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12 Comments

  1. November 7th, 2011 / 6:01 pm stephen—

      i didn’t know you were younger than me. feel kinda strange now

  2. November 7th, 2011 / 6:05 pm shaun gannon—

      wow you’re taller than me

  3. November 7th, 2011 / 6:12 pm Maggie—

      2good2b4got10

  4. November 7th, 2011 / 6:17 pm Merzmensch—

      Hard stuff… I wonder, who are all the people who wrote and animated and glittered these textes and distributed them all over the net… Animated hystery of contemporary melancholia.

  5. November 7th, 2011 / 6:25 pm Erik Stinson—

      we may never know these mystery lovers

  6. November 7th, 2011 / 8:27 pm Tony—

      The only thing fat about you is your heart baby

  7. November 7th, 2011 / 10:48 pm Jeff Noh—

      found the last of these rather compelling.. jesus 

  8. November 8th, 2011 / 12:21 am c2k—

      I like this post and I can’t figure out why.

      :-(

  9. November 8th, 2011 / 4:04 am David Fishkind—

      wowwee a new htmlgiant personality was conceived a lil ago and today he was borrrrnnnn

  10. November 8th, 2011 / 7:30 am Craig Ronald Marchinkoski—

      these poems would be good prints to have on oversized sweatshirts 

  11. November 8th, 2011 / 7:25 pm Tomes and Talismans—

      The only good love notes could also plausibly be DOOM cheat codes.

  12. November 12th, 2011 / 1:36 am Dubya—

      I had no clue one of my poems was listed on that netpoets site. Weird. I haven’t written poetry in over a decade. I see know why I gave it up. lol