Glitterpie
COLLABORATIVE INTERNET ARCHIVING & GLITTERPIE RADIO GOODNESS WITH MARY MORGAN
INTERVIEW BY TARA WIBREW
https://glitterpie.tumblr.com/
Tara: How did you start doing glitterpie? When? Why?
Mary: Glitterpie started with two best friends since 4th grade farting around on a green couch in freezing cold Brookings, South Dakota. My friend was finishing up her art degree and I had just moved in with her to see her again and try something else in life. I think the very first post was in November of 2007. At the time, tumblr.com was only about 6 months old and it was a new and fun experimental community of its kind. It was also very easy to use! Now, it has a character and reputation of its own as a “microblogging” platform.
Kristin Jade Dalton and myself have always cherished our long and often hilarious friendship, and at the beginning of Glitterpie’s life it was just a place where we would share things that we liked. I think the first post is a photograph of the two of us in my room, probably 4th or 5th grade, playing dress up in front of a Little Mermaid and fuzzy ballerina color-it-yourself poster. I had always had an online “collector” spirit, using things in passing like RSS feeds, aggregators, social journaling, and tagging sites that allowed me to enjoy and keep a cluster of stuff I thought was cool. (Like Digg, StumbleUpon, MetaFilter, LiveJournal, delicious, and the like). Joining Tumblr was just sort of a continuation of that type of sharing.
Tara: Glitter? Pie? A pie made of shiny stuff, or just two great tastes that taste great together? (Where did the name come from?)
Mary: I think the process was just us trying to make each other laugh. I think at one point around 1997 or 1998 we had created an Angelfire page together, so it was funny for us to be up to something like that again. I wish we could find that old page. It had a bunch of ugly .gifs and yin yangs and probably talked about cute boys or pogs or something. The name “glitterpie” was just sort of something that was blurted out, I don’t even know by which one of us. We tend to sort of blather and giggle enough to make peeing our pants a true threat, so who knows what was going on there.
The second-ever posting is an intro that may shed some light onto its beginning aesthetic as a “friend celebration” page: (sic) “once in the fair city of l.a. gear there was a magical jazzy jeweled merkin”…Ok that probably doesn’t make much sense to anybody else. Here’s a brief biography of Mary and Kristin: Mary and Kristin met in 4th grade, they shared the same creepy sense of humor and love for “strange” music. They watched lots of Siffle and Olly whilst listening to Beck and Rick James. They grew up,went to seperate colleges and are back together again living in Brookings, SD.
Our love is deeper than Lou Reed lyrics, so if you want to step get ready for a beat down. BOot Strap Holla! Best Friends Forever. L.A. Gears for life. Activities we enjoy: Hip hop dance parties, Urination induced by laughter, telling Bailey to get outta here (RIP brown dawg), Jokes suitable for 8-year olds, saying we’re too tired, go-getters, gold lycra, not pooping anywhere but our own home, recording time capsules on an old karaoke machine, writing about boy crushes in our diary, talking on AIM while in the same room, YOUTUBE VIDEOS!!!”
All I know now is that now I am totally stuck with that goofy name. I don’t think I could ever get rid of it at this point both for sentimental value and because I have put a lot of thought and work into it at this point. In fact, viewing it in this way is probably much better than the regular site itself. I love staring at it and fantasizing about one day getting to print everything out and paste it like a shrine all over the walls. For me, it is a fascinating and inspiring chunk of eye candy and color and sounds. It just makes me feel good.
At one point, (June, 2008) Kristin wanted to move on and preferred having her own personal page so she stopped contributing to Glitterpie. She would occasionally post though until well into 2009. She started “Alas, Pink Pigeon” which ended up being a lot more fashion and high art photography.
Later, she changed her blog to Wicked Wink which is what remains today. We’ve done a few shares, mentions, and references back and forth since then, including making downloadable mixtapes. Now, she is an editor for a very large arts and culture lifestyle website called “The World’s Best Ever”, where her weekly editorial is vintage photographs of hot ladies called Babes of Yore.
I think “a pie made of shiny stuff” works just fine, except for the fact that it was often construed as an anatomical reference that sparkled. Not sure about that part.
Tara: What do you want people to get out of glitterpie?
Mary: Glitterpie has gone through many stages throughout its 5 years. Sometimes it was a parody-machine, short fiction platform, a place to highlight our friends who were often up to something artsy, a diary that told stories of what was going on, messages to our friends, a submission-based community for bizarre internet flotsam and jetsam, and a couple times a fake advice column. There was a period of time in which I made a lot of posts by cellphone recording, which were often very hard to make out once they were uploaded. We used to answer to an email called sparklebabies where we went by the name “Goodwill Panties”, which was a quote from a fake song we wrote for a fake band where we called ourselves the Denim Lunchbags as well as Love Rhombus.
At this point, Glitterpie is just continuing to be a place of handpicked images, videos, and snippets of things whose collective theme is hard to define. Sometimes it had some heavy usage of its “ask” feature and even a formspring. The disqus commenting system goes through ebbs and flows of usage.
What tickles me most about people going to the site is if they see something they like or have a different experience. Honestly, sometimes it feels a little vulnerable; choosing things like what a person finds most beautiful can be very personal. A lot of times I go for interesting or funny, though. It’s the joy of sharing that I really enjoy the most.
Tara: Promote! How do people find you online, and details on your radio show?
Mary: Besides the actual site, we have a public Facebook group “I Follow Gliterpie” that has some pretty fun interactions. It was created before the age of Facebook “pages” to “like”, so it kind of straddles some eras of use and function. (At one point all officers with officer names were wiped out when it turned over).
The radio show has been a new little addition to the glitterpie stuff. I always wanted to learn how to host a radio show and I love music. Happily, I got my chance recently with KWVA 88.1 in Eugene. It streams online during my time slot, and has become a really special time of friends being able to hang out from coast to coast!
Tara: What’s the thing you love most about putting glitterpie together?
Mary: I like that it’s a relaxing and engaging hobby for me. I love that people, mostly my personal friends, have been going there for years even though it’s so silly. It has also helped me make new friends and connect to people that share affinities for what I like. It’s just a wonderful repository of things and, to me, almost a recording of history.
Tara: Anything else you want people to know about you and/or glitterpie?
Mary: Almost anything goes. It’s fairly eclectic. Lots of people get confused when they first visit. It’s more fun when others get involved and contribute. But even if they don’t, I’ll try to be around for as long as it makes sense. Also, one time our two friends made a replica of our website to make fun of us and our style of posts. They used the same theme we had at the time and trolled us hardcore. It was pretty hysterical but led to some pretty awkward, butthurt moments because they ragged on our interests and even my recently deceased dog. Still, it’s a good memory for me now. I think they still feel bad about a couple of the jokes.
Another story: a former partner donated his time and talents to create the current website layout. I have no html/css skills whatsoever. I think the image hosting site he used to house some of the letters for the title banner are forever gone or something and I’m too dumb to fix it. In a funny tidbit, he started a tumblr in which he complains about stuff that pisses him off. At one point I heard that had landed him a book deal!
I have analytics, and the weirdest part is that the #1 reason people go to my site is because they are searching for the lyrics to a song we sang about dinosaurs in 1st grade. I guess that is in a lot of other people’s heads.
I feel pretty bad for an art studio/craft center that goes by Glitterpie as well. Their site and activities are way more professional. But I still come up first in search results. Sorry, guys!
I often get in trouble for posting pictures that are regarded as unflattering.
Tara: Your favorite glitterpie radio moment of the last year?
Mary: I love it when people call the station to tell me that I helped them have a better day. Hearing that also helps me have a brighter time. I’m always just pleasantly happy when anyone at all is listening, especially when having a great morning because of the songs I choose! Feels good, man.
