WHY THE GRAPHICS COMMUNITIES' FAD OF THE MID-2000S WAS IMPORTANT TO ME

A new article? ALREADY? I must be going crazy. But this topic was too close to my heart to wait more. I’m on a roll, deal with it.

What am I going to talk about today? The Great Graphics Communities Fad of the Mid 2000s and what it meant to me.

I had internet for the first time when I was around 12 or 13, I don’t remember that moment exactly but I do remember my first router, its shape and also the old, bulky pc I had that could barely turn on but I decided to stress by opening multiple Internet Explorer windows full of colorful, sparkly, image-heavy websites that I wanted so bad to replicate. I wanted to make the same glittery images with anime girls these people did, and I happened to have a Photoshop 7 cd that a relative send to me with a book about HTML. My bulky, 256mb of ram equipped pc had other ideas, though. So I put the need to learn how to create all that wonderful stuff on the back burner, and I became obsessed with it to the point that in 2007 my dad gave up and bought me a laptop with not 1, but TWO gigabytes of ram! That was awesome. Windows Vista was beautiful, I loved it (I still love it and still think it was criminally underrated) and now I had the chance to install a graphic design software and create to my heart’s content (after doing my homework).

I googled (because of course I did) and through its website full of graphic knick-knacks I found a community on Forumcommunity.net named “Kasiniste” which stored some links to (obviously) pirated software (I believe it was Paint Shop Pro 8 and 9) and I installed them on my computer. I decided to introduce myself in the appropriate forum because I didn’t have the slightest idea of how keygens worked and I couldn’t wait to learn how to do glittery, wonderful things. The problem, though, was that the community was MASSIVE. Hundreds and hundreds of users chatting in the tagboard about everything and nothing, moderators and admins that didn’t acknowledge you, no one answering the question of a newbie because even newbies were supposed to know you had to read the community’s rules and important threads (guess what, I didn’t know shit). So, seeing that I wasn’t really welcomed there, I embarked on a quest to join a community that was smaller, close-knitted and more welcoming. That’s where I found the nemesis of Kasiniste, the Anti-Kasiniste. It was, quite obviously, an anti-forum. They didn’t like Kasiniste at all, and among the reasons why were that it was elitist as fuck, not welcoming at all, and full of what at the time they called “bimbeminkia” (loose translation: “dumbabies” thank you Wordreference). I decided I liked that community. It was still in its infancy, the admins were nice, and I figured I could learn more about graphics since one of the users had a website full of Photoshop resources that I really, really liked. So, starry-eyed and hopeful, I introduced myself telling the users my bad experience with Kasiniste.

Anti-Kasiniste became my digital home. My everything. I gave all the energy and ideas I had in my body and mind to it. And in that community, I found out that “bimbeminkia” were everywhere, literally (and I was one myself, even if self-aware). Forumfree.it, Forumcommunity.net (and later Blogfree.net) were full of communities centered around learning how to do graphic stuff that were carbon copies of Kasiniste: identical forums, same tutorials, same elitism, same “mean girl” energy among the users. It was pretty funny when Kasiniste, having an over-inflated ego because they were the most popular graphic community on all three websites, crusaded against these smaller, almost identical communities because they dared to have similarly named forums, similar graphic schools, similar help threads and more. Here I am, providing you with some examples thanks to the amazing thing that is the Wayback Machine: 1, 2, 3 and 4 (I was actually a staffer in this community). See how they’re all similar somehow?

The problem was, Kasiniste themselves weren’t immune from copying and stealing other people’s resources and content and claiming them as their own, or not giving credit to the original creators at all. Terms of use were pretty much not respected at the time, or not read at all (I was guilty of that too, I didn’t steal content from Deviantart and claimed it as my own but I used images coming from there without knowing I couldn’t actually do that). So, you know, the pot calling the kettle black, and yada yada. This, though, was part of a bigger sentiment: the need of being the next big thing, the popular ones, the ultimate “mean girls”. Having a popular community was important to a bunch of teenagers whose sense of self was probably warped at that time. We wanted to be a part of something important, something cool and popular, because most of us probably were far from being the cool ones in an offline setting. At least, I wasn’t. Being a “bimbaminkia” myself I understood the nuances of their reasoning. I understood why they were so cliquey, mean, self-centered: it was just the reality of being a teenage girl on the internet in the mid-2000s. We thought we were edgy, cool, different, “not like the other girls” who didn’t even know what internet was or were so ignorant and only knew about MSN and maybe Facebook. We thought we were in on a “big secret”, because forums were sort of a safe haven for us, away from normal life, where we could be a totally different person, someone different from the plain girl you don’t even notice at school. We could be anything at that time, we could be the cool girls who were adored for their creativity. Graphics was our creative outlet, even if most of the works were somehow similar (each community sort of followed a specific style, most probably based on the queen bees, the supreme admins who were most of the time a lot older than the users, and their works), and I remember I tried to replicate the works I liked and somehow they turned out different, original…mine.

It was in that moment that I decided that everything I did would be what now I call free, open source, in the public domain. Because I didn’t want other people to feel like I did when I asked for help and everybody ignored me, or I had to follow lots and lots of rules to access the basic tutorials for Paint Shop Pro and be constantly active on the community and dedicate all my free time to it lest I be banned or kicked out of the graphic school. I decided to write tutorials and make resources myself. I scoured the internet for inspiration and tried to create new techniques to do stuff. I had so much fun writing tutorials and making resources that I decided to put them all in a public forum: everyone could access them, everyone could comment the guides and even critique them if they weren’t good, everyone could redistribute them (and they did without crediting me when the only thing I asked for was a link to the community I posted the resources in, but I digress).

Without knowing, I became part of something bigger. In retaliation to the nonsensical rules of Kasiniste and other forums of the same ilk, I decided that my tutorials and resources would always be open and free. It wasn’t just “bimbeminkia” who decided their tutorials were too good to be available to everyone though: there were other communities, seemingly more “professional”, with admins who had personal websites chock-full of amazing free resources but decided that their tutorials had to be restricted, even if many of them were just translations of tutorials published on Livejournal communities. Why? Just because. I didn’t like that at all. At the time, I didn’t know why that didn’t sit well with me, but now I know: it was the sinking feeling that knowledge wasn’t available to everyone who wanted to learn as it should have been. I thought: no way, this stuff should be free! If I’m knowledgeable about something, I want everyone to know how to do it, not just me! It MUST be open, it MUST be unrestricted! Somehow, copying other people’s graphic works and trying to replicate them in any graphic software I could put my grubby hands on and then writing a tutorial on that became a mission not just for me and my own enjoyment, but for everyone else’s. If it wasn’t for the communities I stumbled upon when I was a teenager, I wouldn’t have developed this mindset that’s still here with me, and it probably always will be. If it wasn’t for the “fad” these teenage girls had to create a space where they could be whatever they wanted and express their creativity (often becoming illustrators and graphic designers when older) I probably wouldn’t have started making my own stuff and distribute it for free, good or bad that was. If it wasn’t for the so-called “pros” that decided to restrict their tutorials and resources because they were too good to risk other people copying them, I wouldn’t have this website now with almost 50 free fonts made by me with love – albeit not perfect at all.

So thank you “bimbeminkia” and “pro” for creating communities that survived as long as a cat on the highway because you gave me the confidence boost I needed to start experimenting for fun, not for profit or popularity (I tried, believe me, but I just didn’t have the X Factor apparently), and sparked in my heart a passion that lasts to this day.