I originally envisioned this website as a satire of American consumerist culture, through the lens of infamous 90s ISP America Online. But I had an honest appreciation of bare-bones early 90s internet aesthetics. My first layout attempted to honor both. It was mostly a recreation of the early AOL home page — minimal css styling, basic fonts — but with an updated color scheme and graphic elements that hinted at my cynical perspective.

The second version of the site was an attempt to inject more satirical elements but also more of my genuine personality. It was still a close interpreation of the default AOL homepage, but I took even more liberties with the design. I opted for a high-femme purple and pink color story, and added more fun graphic touches including some trippy emojis. I was especially proud of my take on the weather section of the AOL homepage — I swapped the weather icon for a swagged up pyramid smoking a blunt and kept the temperature at a cool 420.

After getting my most cynical, satirical impulses out of my system, I was inspired to make the website a more authentic representation of my personality and tastes. That's what motivated the design for the third version of the site. I was inspired by a renewed apprecation of Y2K aesthetics and the sleek, futuristic utopia they promised. I was also influenced by the pieces and marketing campaigns for Heaven by Mark Jacobs. I wanted to capture that combination of fresh, clean and futuristic aesthetics, and an edgy, underground sensibility.

This layout felt like a pretty big shif for me. I decided to fully embrace a high-femme sensibility with a look inspired by Juicy Couture tracksuits and Barbiecore aethetics, which I'd long admired and were trending at the time. This layout was also the first one modelded after later versions of AOL and the Windows XP user interface (previous versions were based on earlier versions of AOL and Windows 98.) I also totally overhauled the code to make the homepage more mobile-responsive.

This version of the site was another attempt to comine nostalgia for the past with the culture of the moment. It was first inspired by a graphic I made years ago to capture things I loved about summers in south Texas — Tex-Mex food, Whataburger wrappers and music from local legends Selena and Jessica SImpson. The color scheme and logo were also inspred by the bright, brash sound and imagery of Charli xcx's BRAT album.

I've never been a huge Halloween person — I actually used to be a huge scaredy cat. But over the years, I've developed an apprecation for horror movies and some of the other elemnts of spooky season. When I saw Diablo Cody's Lisa Frankenstein, I was inspired to create a layout to celebrate my emerging spooky side. I tried to capture the 80s/90s vibe of the film. The lo-fi, Lynchian aesthetics of the music and visuals from Magdalena Bay's Imaginal Disk album also served as inspiration.

This is probably my favorite version of the site. It was inspired by the 2024 US presidential election, 80s and 90s soft drink advertisements and Addison Rae's stunning "Diet Pepsi" song and video. I was going for a dark, glam, sad vibe and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I love this layout so much, I couldn't imagine ever changing it. Even though I did make a new layout for summer 2025, this layout may make another appearance in the future. I love it so much. (This layout was incorrectly labeled version 4.2 when it first launched because I had started working on it before I decided to make the special Halloween layout and I didn't notice until later. But it is version 4.3 — the third layout from the site's fourth year.)