Alex met Sam at nursery. They were first loves. They built forts together, shared sandwiches in high school, and were each other's first kiss.

They were the dream couple until Sam got into EDM music.

While Alex enjoyed folk, first loves are kind of like your current account. If they aren't working for you anymore,

maybe it's time to switch with the current account switch service.

Some random girl named Tara Harbick, who was basically posting saying, hey, my friends and I thought of a really cool idea.

We're a group of roommates, and we're going to put our lives online.

Hi, I'm Madison Malone Kircher, and I'm Rachel Hampton, and you're listening to ICY Mind. In case you missed it,

Slate's podcast about internet culture.

Well, today's not exactly our podcast about internet culture, is it?

It's not, but it's still an incredible show, and it is still about internet culture, and we're very excited to share with you.

Think of it as a little Christmas gift we picked out special for you ICY Mind guys.

In case you missed it.

Slate's got this incredible show called One Year.

It's a podcast that focuses on telling stories from one year in our recent past that we may have missed or completely forgotten.

Their current season is exploring the year 1995, which was a time when the internet was still in its infancy, if not basically a fetus.

Episodes have covered things like the Oklahoma City bombing, a fertility clinic scandal, and the story we've got for you today is about what I think is best described as the first internet soap opera.

I think that's a really good description. This story is weird and wild, and about a small group of creators who, through what amounted to mostly just a series of interconnected blog posts,

inspired one of the earliest instances of an online fandom.

It's a story about online creativity.

I'm going to say it. It's a story about parasocial relationships, and it's a story about how not everything on the internet lasts forever.

It's basically the kind of story ICYMI would have told if we had been making this podcast in 1995, which would have been hard for me as a three-year-old and even harder for Rachel.

I was not even thought of yet.

...