You know... I'm not all that old (seventeen), but I've been on the internet a long time, relatively speaking (ever since I was 11, though I didn't get a webpage until I was 12). I was around when the idea of a personal domain, for a teenager, was still relatively novel. Most of the domains that were around back then (gemz.net, delish.net, snuggles (can't even remember which extension X3), dreamz, plastique) are either no longer functioning or are under different management. But domain buying spread slowly, because they were still expensive then, and a lot of people operated under the idea that having one made you above those without one, and there was a huge obsession with being 'hosted'--that is, having your page 'rescued' from a freeserver and allowed to take up residence on someone's domain.

Most of that has dissipated, largely due to the fact that registering a domain is really cheap now. Sadly, I bought kurai just before all these other registrars popped up, so its keeping is still expensive, comparatively speaking. But the point is that I can't go to a page anymore without stumbling across a top-level domain owned by a teenager--or a pre-teenager--and the fact that so many of them are so poor in quality is staggering. x__x; I'm not saying kurai is any better or that, even more ludicrously, there should be an age limit, it's just mildly depressing. Especially domains that are no more than a blog. I consider blogs and journals addendums to a larger site, something I would visit because I enjoyed the person's other work and would thusly like to get to know them better. Sort of like an 'about the author' thing, if you know what I mean. I really can't fathom anyone buying up a top-level domain name purely for their online journal, and not because of the cost, since it's really not that expensive anymore--just because it doesn't make sense to take a domain name solely for your blog and nothing else.

I realize that this post is aimless and likely does not make a great deal of coherent sense, but I was just thinking about the online community in general as I traipsed through various angsty teenage girl domains...of which there is a great abundance, and if they're not angsty, they're 'arty' (or 'artless', because being 'artless' is apparently more arty than being arty o__O;) and 'deep.'