One of the first “web celebrities” has passed away, sometime in the last few days. there’s no official obituary yet, but tributes and eulogies are being collected.
She founded Smug.com, was (bemusedly) named one of Wired’s Sexiest People (along with Chank Diesel. Ah, 1997), and wrote a blog 2 years before that word existed. Over the last few years, she had published a yearly Advent Calendar. This final one stops at Dec 7th.
I exchanged a few emails with her about 9–10 years ago, since I found out that she was a Michigan State grad, and I wanted to know how she’d managed to escape to NY. I knew she had medical issues even back then, causing Smug to stop publishing and then never to be relaunched. There’s still a forlorn post-it note on the old frontpage, but the great archives are there.
But now she’s gone, and we are lesser without her.
I have no idea who this woman was and so probably shouldn’t even bother posting, but I swear to all that is holy, if I never hear the word ‘bemused’ or any variation thereof, it will be too fucking soon.
However, she sounds like she was an interesting person, so RIP interesting lady—the world could use more of those.
insert “again”
bemused, bemused, bemused