a eulogy for polyvore (RIP 2007-2018)
on fanfiction, community, and decentralized media
In middle school (circa 2011), I was an active power user of Polyvore, a pre-Instagram, Pinterest-adjacent social website where fashion enthusiasts styled outfit collages and published them for other users to “like” and “comment” on. Polyvore was founded in 2007 and had several acquirers during its lifetime; it was eventually shut down by its final acquirer, SSENSE, in 2018.
A natural question to ask is why a suburban 13 year old would be using Polyvore, whose primary demographic was 20s-30s upper middle class women who aspirationally worshiped designers like Herve Leger and Marchesa (heyday designers around 2011).
There was a more niche corner of Polyvore where far fewer people lived that used the platform for a, most likely, very surprising and unintended use case: fanfiction. This is the corner of Polyvore where I lived.
At the time, I was also an avid reader of The Clique, a YA book series about wealthy middle school girls who lived in Westchester, New York (think a PG version of Gossip Girl). I forget how exactly (I think from the author’s weekly blog?), but I learned that there was a huge community of fans of The Clique who lived on Polyvore. They would write fanfiction and publish it on the platform alongside collages of imaginary outfits their character would wear during the scene of the story. The Clique wasn’t even the only fanfiction community on Polyvore, but also usual suspects like One Direction, Harry Potter, etc.
The Polyvore post editor was surprisingly sophisticated, allowing internet image search and grab, image uploads, custom font text, unlimited length post captions, etc., making it actually a very flexible, generalizable platform.
Eventually, I expanded my horizons beyond The Clique universe and discovered that users even created their own fictional universes on Polyvore. A user would post a general story premise, a list of character briefs, and other users would “apply” to fill the role of a character. The original creator of the story would then select which person would fill each role based on their writing portfolios (which was essentially their Polyvore profiles). Each story would then unfold in real-time as the 5-6 users who each “played” a character would publish stories from their character’s point-of-view, carrying the plot forward.
While I remember very few details about my time on Polyvore, I remember discovering the XX during this time and listening to “Intro” for hours on loop while carefully crafting my post collages. I remember my best friend on the platform was a user who went by something like hottiecheerleader9 who claimed to lived in Indiana and be 16 (how much of that is actually true, I have no idea).
I don’t even remember when or why I stopped using Polyvore, though I imagine it was because I was about to enter high school and felt embarrassed that I was still participating in a practice called “fanfiction,” which felt so shamefully childish at the time. I think the only IRL person that I have ever told about my second life on Polyvore was a crush that I skyped every day the summer before ninth grade (peak Polyvore-usage) because he had just moved states.
I have since tried several times over the last decade to track down my Polyvore profile and revisit my own posts, but I had forgotten my username, had long lost access to the original email I used to register on the site, and the platform was eventually shut down anyway blocking any future attempt at resurface. Now, the only remnants of Polyvore you can find are images of posts there were later posted on Pinterest or Tumblr.
There aren’t necessarily any groundbreaking takeaways to glean from this story, but I do think it speaks to the power of a few perhaps more existential topics that I often think about (even over a decade later): decentralized media, fandom, and emergent behavior.
When I’m wearing my investor hat, I often become extremely skeptical. I’ll advise consumer builders to be opinionated about what they build. If you’re building for everyone, you’re building for no one, so they say. Or I’ll tell them that users’ attention is extremely shallow and fleeting so they must spell out intended user actions/flows explicitly.
While I truly believe those pieces of advice, my experience with Polyvore is constantly grounding. It reminds me to never underestimate users; that it is part of the human condition to look for connection and opportunities to share our stories; and that strong, often decentralized communities will always surprise you with their passion and creativity.