aim buddy icons (2002)

before runescape and myspace, aol instant messenger (aim) was really formative for me as a kid, spending time online with friends.

there were three things you could use to express yourself on aim:

• a screenname
• a profile (it usually had song lyrics in it, or inside jokes, or a "<3 [your middleschool girlfriend/boyfriend's name]
• a buddy icon

so, for this work, it's 100 randomly selected buddy icons grouped in a 10x10 matrix, pulled from 'badassbuddy.com', from mid-2002.

i accomplished this by using the wayback machine (since badassbuddy.com is no longer online) and a python scraper using selenium.

i think this is cool because buddy icons influenced online culture a lot. and looking at a tapestry of them transports you back to 2002 because you can really feel where we were culturally and mentally as online people back then.