...ARE YOU READY FOR SOME DIGITAL FRIEND-MAKING?!
Hopefully whichever collection of colorful padded laundry you were rooting for yesterday won. If they didn't, there's always next season! Maybe your chosen laundry load will prevail then. Moving on to other pastimes...
Happy National Internet Friends Day! How nice of the Random Observance powers that be to create a special day just for the likes of us, Internet Friend!
It's a hazy memory at best, but I do remember a time when the internet was primarily* a wide open digital space for meeting other people in far-flung locales who were just as passionate about my weird interests as I was.
* Yes, I know that there is also the whole racy photo & video sharing thing, but from cave painting to the Kama Sutra, every technological advancement our species has ever come up with related to data sharing has involved prurient ogling. This is just to be expected.
Some of the earliest places I frequented online were the Rolling Stone message boards where I would debate with music nerds about whether Radiohead's OK Computer or The Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin was the better late 90s concept album, discussing my favorite foreign indie bands' upcoming US tours in LiveJournal comments, and generally trying to find people whose tastes matched my own to tell me what to listen to next. CD Wow had a wonderful Related Artists feature that was extremely helpful in this endeavor — right up until Amazon swallowed it up like the gaping all-consuming hyper-capitalist maw of avarice that it is. Get bent, Bezos!
Anyway, the internet was a pretty fun place once upon a time. You know, before it became a forum for idiots screaming at other idiots — often about things both idiots agree on! Oh, what a world!
Me and Boredwalk co-founder Meredith virtually anytime either of us goes online.
GIF via John Waters/Pink Flamingos
But by the same token, I feel extremely fortunate that the comments sections on Boredwalk's Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok posts have mostly become welcoming hubs for misfits and weirdos to connect and become internet friends with each other — and in some cases, this has led to Boredwalk fans becoming IRL friends, too!
Not bad for a brand founded BY introverts, FOR introverts (and other people, too; we're not all that exclusive or precious about who follows us or engages with our content, SO LONG AS THEY ARE NICE).
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Want some notable Februrary 13th birthdays and historical facts to impress people with? Here are a few...
• On this day in 1633 Galileo Galilei rolled into Rome to be excommunicated from the Catholic Church for having the unmitigated GALL to suggest that Earth was NOT the center of the universe. Classic loving deity vibes — never change!
• On this day in 1920, former baseball player Rube Foster founded the Negro National League, one of several professional baseball leagues formed by Black athletes and business owners during the period when organized baseball was segregated, back before Jackie Robinson saved us from our worst impulses.
• On this day in 1960, Black college students staged the first of the Nashville sit-ins at three lunch counters around Nashville, Tennessee.
Today's birthday celebrants include American painter Grant Wood of 'American Gothic' fame (1891), American general & test pilot Chuck Yeager, who was the first person to break the sound barrier (1923), actress Kim Novak of Vertigo and Bell, Book, and Candle fame (1933), singer-songwriter and Monkees bassist Peter Tork (1942), TV host and former Cincinnati mayor Jerry Springer (1944), Duke University men's basketball coaching legend Mike Krzyzewski (1947), prog rock/pop star Peter Gabriel (1950), post-punk icon and Joy Division/New Order bassist Peter Hook (1956), American hardcore gadfly Henry Rollins (1961), English Britpop star Robbie Williams (1974), NFL Hall of Fame wide receiver Randy Moss (1977), and actress Mena Suvari (1979).
Pour one out for: country superstar Waylon Jennings, who sang his last song this day in 2002, and poet laureate Lucille Clifton, who shuffled off this coil in 2010.
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Alright! STILL no new community Q&A this week — guess you're feelin' shy — but if you'd like to be featured in an upcoming Monday email (and are a customer with some Boredwalk tees, tanks, hoodies, towels, bags, or books to show off), just reply to this and let us know and I will send you some fun questions!
We'll be back here in your inbox on Wednesday with some more random holidays to observe, historical tidbits to acknowledge, and fun links to entertaining content! Until next time...
Peace, love, and internet friendliness,
Matt
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