Leslie Harpold: Always Fearless, Never Smug
If you didn’t know her work, you might fear that someone who owned the domain names fearless.net and smug.com might be a bit, well… prickly. But more than 10 years after Leslie Harpold helped start some of the most clever and intelligent personal sites on the web, and just a few short months after her untimely passing, the lasting impression of Leslie’s life, on and off the web, is of surpassing kindness. And as we look at 10 years of blogging culture this week, her impact and legacy in the world of blogging is well worth revisiting.
The sites that Leslie helped create are legion. There’s The Historical Present, her blog. And Harpold.com (formerly Hoopla.com), which acts as something of a gateway to the rest of Leslie’s legacy on the web. The Smug archives still bear witness to the early experiments in design and writing which Leslie shared with us all. And each year, Leslie shared with us her Advent Calendars, (see 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005) making explicit her desire to give a gift to the entire web.
We said yesterday that “fundamental generosity is a key trait of all of the innovators in blogging” and it’s never more true than with Leslie Harpold’s legacy, as is evident from the loving tributes to her life that were shared late last year.
The MetaFilter community offered a wide range of observances, which were echoed all over the web, especially by Leslie’s friends like Shauna Wright, Lance Arthur, Paul Ford and scores more remembrances captured by Kevin Fanning.
But if you look at Jeffrey Zeldman’s 1998 interview with Leslie, you get a good understanding of why she was so influential. She was talking about Smug, but it could have been about any of her works:
I went looking for something on the web that was about media, culture, didn’t pander to the reader, but wasn’t arrogant either. Something funny, that spoke to me as someone who had a life online and off. I couldn’t find it, so I made it.
And all of these creative works, including her own blog, were created after Leslie had penned one of the earliest critical pieces about blogging. (“An unlikely candidate for IPO fever, Web Logs do help highlight nichey obsessives, and don’t help product move off the shelves. You’re not going to get rich, famous or thinner. I advise that you channel your energy into thinking of something interesting all your own. Originality is indeed rewarded in an emerging medium.”)
That healthy skepticism helped Leslie focus not on technology or the bits and bytes, but on the generosity that ties together so many communities in blogging. For all her pioneering work done with various types of content, there’s perhaps one lasting contribution to blogging culture that we can attribute the most to Leslie Harpold: It’s okay to be as generous and giving to the people whom you meet with and connect with online as we are to the people we care about face-to-face
Though it seems obvious in retrospect, sharing kindness and even, yes, love with the people we meet through our websites was a leap of faith that wasn’t obvious at the time, and for that reason it’s well worth highlighting the unique role that Leslie Harpold has played in the history of social media. While everyone has said that she’ll be missed, the happy news is that her works online are still out there, waiting to be discovered again, or if you’re very lucky, to be read for the very first time.
3 Comments
I'm kinda dizzy from all of this Leslie gone stuff. I just didn't know until an email came back undeliverable this week. Huh? Six months after she is gone, I send an email. Well, I forced myself to send it; it was a link to a stupid little article about me and I was tired of clicking around her name when I did the forwards. So I included her. I hadn't wanted to bother her. I was her concierge for a day. Literally. Like 8 hours. I annoyed her, I'm certain. She was such an intense person. Wow. I admired the hell out of her before I even met her.
She emailed me and I emailed back after she moved back to Michigan. With that first email, I googled her. I was awestruck with my findings.
I remember stuff. She told me how anal she was about items for Thanksgiving, but that she would give me a pass on the everyday foods.She said she had been in an accident in Morocco(?)and with what should have been a nothing , turned into a huge something . She slept little regardless. Didn't need much sleep. It seems that even with what little conversing and few emails we exchanged between us, I still was surprisingly informed. I don't remember her talking long or talking fast( that's typically me) , I was gone from her house 87% of that 8 hours, and I don't think I got the information through osmosis. I guess all I can say is she made her words count. Holy shit, did she ever. Her wit and humor were stunningly perfect. Only somebody as smart and clever as I could pick up on it. I can't even imagine now what all I missed.
I tried like hell to do right by her. I did her grocery shopping that day. We both like our fruit warm. I went to the drug store. I Fed x'd dishes to San Fran. I took in her Passat ( i think it was ) to get detailed. I was going to get some things framed for her. Her construction guys included one hot fireman, so she said. I didn't know she smoked until I was outside . She was in the front office ( if you look on the Flick'r pics, the two front windows on the left is where she sat on her computer)with the window open and I smelled it then. I told her I was surprised as her house didn't smell like a smoker's and she thanked me profusely. She told me to read " The Tipping Point" and I knew I had to . I did. Leslie=Maven+Connector?
She snapped an order at me ( apparently, I hadn't noticed) and later apoligized. No worries. In a phone conversation prior to our meeting, she said she moved back home because her Mother's husband was gravely ill and she wanted to be nearby for her mom. Her mother ( she said I would love her mom, she was cool) didn't know that and I suspect she would never have let her know that. She would just happen to land in Michigan . That is when I knew she was really special. Because I could tell she really, really would rather have been in NYC all the while asking me to get estimates for corian and pink curtains ( at least one room in the house should be girly) at Target for her new abode in the Pointes. Rods should not have anything that looks menacing on them.
I understood she was a genius within minutes of googling her after that first email request. I understood she was special. I had nary a clue how loved she was and how important she was to so many people , in so many venues. I was in NYC a few weeks ago for the first time, not knowing she was gone from this earth. I spent a lot of time there wondering where exactly she had lived, wondering where she had shopped and which places she would have told me to visit. I hadn't bothered to ask , but she wouldn't have answered. Oh my.
We're well into 2008 now, and I still can't believe it. Leslie was the most alive person I've ever known. Fearless indeed.
Today she seems a little more gone though. It looks like leslie.harpold.com and smug.com are no longer. Every few months I spend time there, remembering, missing her, wishing for a new blog entry, squarely denying that she's more than out of touch.
We spent many dozens, maybe hundreds of hours talking by phone during her Hell's Kitchen (okay, Clinton) years. It all started for me with Leslie on AOL's instant messenger in '96. She was a shining light, a long-tailed comet. I remember how much she loved that book. Before it was known. Perhaps before it was published. Leslie was that way. An outsider on the inside of everything. A straight-shooting, brilliant, modest maverick who demanded real connection, she enriched my life so much. I know she's gone but I still don't really accept it.
Leslie had a special kind of magic. But today there's no trace of her sites.
As long as those sites were up, her brand of humanity was alive, pure, unedited and quenching. The availability of her writing made her slightly less absent. Sad isn't really an appropriate construct for missing Leslie. And sappy sentimentality wouldn't please her at all.
But that writing should remain on the Internet. Those sites should never come down. They belong here like Leslie belonged here. Immortal.
I'm posting tonight in case anyone is listening. There are many of use who'd gladly contribute so her sites can live on. It's the least we can do and the most we can hope for. Does anyone know how to reach her family?
Leslie was truly an inspiration to me, I was a avid reader of her blogs. Her design work and writing just seemed to flow, you could get a sense of who she was as a person by her work. She is truly missed and never replaceable.
Kelly