________  ________  ________   
   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?


EOF