Avery Dame-Griff

Last summer I was the Rose Library’s LGBTQ Collections Fellowship at Emory University. The blog for the archive just posted my write up as part of the fellowship. It is part of a bigger project of mine, but here is a sneak peak of some of what I am exploring:

scholarblogs.emory.edu/marbl/2026/0...

Yeah, I have similar concerns, as several regional queer support groups rely on Discord to keep youth connected when they can't be physically present. Unfortunately, history also tells us migrating services is hard when there's no newbie-friendly alternative.

Authenticity Matters: Discord's Pride Month 2025 This June, our PRIDE ERG came together to celebrate the meaningful act of simply being who you are and bringing your whole self to work.

I guess authenticity does really matter...but only if it's the legally approved kind.

I don't have much to add that other folks haven't said, but as a historian of the queer internet, this doesn't surprise me at all. LGBTQ users are convenient corporate props...until they're not worth protecting.

a nice thing about when the internet was a bunch of little sites and servers was that it was a lot harder for governments to pressure "the chat provider everyone uses" to implement age verification.

you wanna pressure 300 separate IRC servers? good luck with that. but one company? easy

Original Sega Genesis case for RPG Shining in the Darkness

Photo of inside of the case. No cartridge is included, but on the left is a sheaf of folded graph paper. It's yellowed with age, and there's...math?

Photo of all 9 hand-drawn maps included in the case

Close-up for one map for the Cave of Courage.

Found this at a Free Book Fair held by great local used bookstore Page 42 (www.page42bookstore.com). It was in a box of random media and I grabbed it because, why not? No cartridge, but it did have the original owner's painstakingly hand-drawn level maps, including coffee (?) stains.

Sure! I've followed you, but since it doesn't appear open to message on my end, I've opened mine up.

Oh, great! Thanks for considering it. Would you prefer to chat though Bluesky or Substack? Also, you can feel free to email me at admin AT queerdigital.com too.

*piece, not price - oh, for an edit button.

Sorry to pop in, but having a community historian moment: if you do find them and ever had the interest, I would be thrilled to preserve them as part of the Queer Digital History Project (queerdigital.com), including holding them as a request-only collection.

So good to see this price and all the folks and stories in it! Also, a self-plug: the Queer Digital History Project (queerdigital.com) is always open for donations, if folks have physical ephemera or digital records to be preserved (but not made accessible publicly online)!

Illustration of Santa typing up his list on classic daisy wheel printer paper.

It's late in the day to share, but a Happy Holidays wish from me and Santa's daisy wheel printer. (From Sandra Boynton's book Christmastime (1987))

There is a certain carefully crafted historical amnesia these fantasies require to sustain an reproduce themselves, imo. Easier than admitting that every time, the core problems of the Internet really are just white dudes all the way down.

I’m sick of writing about dead trans people | Xtra Magazine For 15 years, I hoped my words would change something. Now I’m grieving the world that could’ve been

I wrote about the exhaustion and dissonance of writing about TDOR for the past 15 years

What is this rabbit hole? I must know.

Gayming Icon and LGBTQ+ games pioneer, Rebecca Heineman, has died - Gayming Magazine Rebecca Heineman, a trailblazing figure in the video game industry and a celebrated icon within the LGBTQ+ gaming community, has died.

"I code so others can dream."

Gayming Icon and LGBTQ+ video game pioneer, Rebecca Heineman, has sadly passed away after a short, tough fight with aggressive cancer.

Read our obituary to this true industry trailblazer: gaymingmag.com/2025/11/gaym...

A meme of 'Is this an archive?' showing a grid with various classifications of things that might be archives based on their content and structure.

Hoping this helps our colleagues across the industry

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.

The future of being trans on the internet The internet has long been a source of information and support for transgender people. Now, trans rights and the internet itself are in a moment of crisis. What happens next?

My metamorphosis into a historian is now complete, because I read this (very good tbc!) @theverge.com package and still thought, "Would it be too much to ask to historicize this moment beyond the mid-2010s? With, y'know, a book (I may have written)?"

I have, I fear, become my (academic) parents.

@adamegriff.bsky.social offers a beautiful mediation of
LiveJournal as digital archaeology. Rehydration methods, ethical refusals, the remains of usernames and spam. Abandoned platforms. #DigitalArchaeology #4S2025

Photo of a bookshelf with computer-related ephemera, including several computer-themed mugs, two cats on computers, a green Intel Bunny Suit doll, a cow statue covered in iMacs, and a Y2K snowglobe with a computer inside of it.

It really is. It currently has pride of place amongst my other doodads I've collected over the years.

Photo of a neon blue analog watch face. The face is emblazoned with the Windows Me logo, and Me on a diagonal across the background in blue and green. It is definitely the 2000s Windows aesthetic in a watch.

My new official conference watch, found at Value Village. It's very Me.

I do really hope so! My main concern with an IA campaign is that their rapid-response preservation efforts can get large amounts of data saved, but they don't have the best track record on ethical stances and user consent to preserve, unfortunately.

Based on this news, are there any significant LGBTQ-related blogs that might be a good candidate for preservation? I'm hoping to connect with blog owners to organize preservation for the Queer Digital History Project prior to the September deadline.

What Is Queer Generational Trauma, and How Do We Tell Stories About It? Lately, I've been obsessing over the concept of queer generational trauma: the pain passed down to us from our ancestors, which we bequeath in turn to those who come after us.

"There’s the gagging ouroboros of history... you’re beating your fists against a wall that bears the indents of countless fists, going back forever."

Over in Autostraddle, I write about queer generational trauma: how it works, and how to tell stories about it.

www.autostraddle.com/what-is-quee...

If there's a site you think is worth preserving, let me know! I may eventually start a collection of sites, as the independent mirror format allows for interesting data analysis possibilities too.

Roberts was a hugely important Black trans activist and journalist, and her blog documents the evolution of trans activism over a 14-year span (2006-2020). She also wrote some pretty great trans-related song parodies, which are worth checking out.

So, I've begun doing something I thought I'd never do: actively mirror trans websites (instead of just relying on the Internet Archive). First up is a mirror of Monica Roberts' TransGriot. Because Roberts used Blogger, I've always worried about its longevity.