We are Helen and Alexis and we're obsessed with digital media, archiving, and Internet education.
Helen Vogelsong-Donahue is an Iranian-American writer, Internet lover, and Master of History with a memoir on the way (GHOST GIRL out with Penguin Random House in 2027).
Alexis Durante-Tierney is a Cajun-Creole Digital Archivist and Co-Founder of The Accessible Archivist Coalition. She is a Master of Library and Information Science and was a 2023 Vatican Archives Fellow.
how to archive your social media
Your memories are not your own — links rot, sites collapse, and apps crash. A step-by-step guide to downloading your data, organizing it, and backing it up to an external hard drive before it’s gone.
read more →everybody get less yassified now!!
Discussing Love Island and the internet’s obsession with filtering famous women — skincaremaxxing, yassification filters, body dysmorphia, and “yassification fatigue.”
read more →Trump Jesus, military combat dolphins, modern art, return to analog, and more — plus photos from a girls’ weekend at the MoMA.
read more →A deadly cult’s original 90s website, a transcribed journal from the 80s, old ouija board how-tos, and lots of modern art.
read more →A fully operational Tamagotchi emulator, a virtual dog pound from the 2000s, Judith’s incredible early-internet home, Strange Science, Louisiana music archives, and Byte Magazine covers.
read more →A weekly dive through the online archives: pulp fiction covers from the 1930s–70s, the Newberry postcard collection, the archived RE4 promotional website, and a 1999 Guardian piece on Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy.
read more →What We Archived This Week: Issue 01
A new weekly fixture where we dive into what we’ve preserved: a Resident Evil mod, Alexis’ wedding photos, an Anthropic CEO blog snippet, and archiving the war in Iran.
read more →5 things we found in the archives this week: Olympian oral histories, Olympic bid archives, the out-of-print book Modern Primitives, the Tongue Drive System, and 19th century Mardi Gras float illustrations.
read more →I’m not posting on TikTok anymore
After six and a half years and 350k followers, I’m leaving the app for good. On genealogy rabbit holes, Hurricane Katrina, a fellowship at the Vatican Archives, and walking away.
read more →don’t worry about tiktok policies — ICE already has your info
On terms of service, surveillance, data brokers, and what we can opt out of. TikTok’s black box algorithm, the January 2025 ban, and why you should read what you’re consenting to.
read more →Rest in Pixels: Death and the Internet
The reality, ethics, and issues of the post-mortem Internet. What happens to your accounts, your memories, and your digital self when you die?
read more →how to download mp3s from dead music blogs
A guide on how and where to access thousands of free, legal mp3s. Five dead music blogs with working downloadable links, plus the Mega Super Mammoth MP3 Blog List.
read more →it’s time to ditch streaming for an ipod
where and how to download free mp3s from dead websites. Music should never have merged with phones. Streaming is convenient, sure, but maybe it shouldn’t be. We’re going mp3 thrifting.
read more →GPT-5’s recent crash-out, threats to the founder, and how the evolution of character-driven Internet fandoms got us here.
read more →The Internet Is Dying. Is It Worth Saving?
Everyone remembers the eye roll-inducing phrase, “the Internet is forever!” Millennials were sold a future founded on web expansion and advancing technology and promised it would last. None of it did.
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