the ephemeral archive

welcome back to my monthly digital zine where I make sense of the ephemeral (the internet) and show you my archive <3

When I started writing this newsletter, I was drawn to writing very short lists compiling girl culture both online and off. This was inspired by a blog I used to follow in the 2000s called largehearted boy — this was back in a time where all of the internet felt knowable, compilable — that would publish these lists of new music and book releases.

And so my very favorite issues of internet bedroom to write were the ones where I unearthed some older piece of girl culture or internet lore and showed it to you alongside something new I discovered scrolling.

Eventually, the lists turned into a series of digital zines where I shared cool girly trash I found online for the most part. I had a Canva subscription and I was the very last person to get on Pinterest in 2025 and I wanted to do something other than write so I made these zines and I’m very proud of them because they are very cute and they were fun to make and now a lot of other great folks on this platform also make digital zines and I think that’s fun.

But I find myself wanting to compile these zines less and less each month and wanting to write more, and so from now until I grow tired of it, the ephemeral archive will include two things:

the ephemeral

I no longer want to just curate what I find for you on the Internet. I want to figure it out.

I want to know why you bitches keep posting Carrie Bradshaw ad nauseam to Notes, or if you really started collecting physical media (or did you just post about it?), or are you really building that cyberdeck and, if so, why? (More on this below).

the archive

I also want to show you my archive.

I have a number of archives — physical and digital. The most toxic part of my marriage is the fact that my husband routinely brings me the things I love but am running out of space for: VHS tapes, comic books, zines, old magazines, and more. There is a pile sitting on my desk that’s getting out of control right now because I keep telling myself I’m going to film a new physical media haul and I will do that and it will be an hour long.

But I thought it would be fun if I started writing more about my archive and not just hoarding it like a dragon.

Each section of the ephemeral archive will be structured around a burning question because I like asking questions and one of my favorite artists of all time, Lynda Barry, once wrote: ask a burning question, get a burning answer.

So in this week’s ephemeral archive, I just wanna know:

are you bitches really building cyberdecks?

I think I feel about the cyberdeck trend the way a lot of you all felt about the explosion of physical media on social media. Because cyberdecks and people talking about cyberdecks have been shoved down my throat by the algo at an unprecedented rate.