The Birth Of I.M. Heart
In the 90s, when email was becoming more and more popular, people would share their email addresses with one another in a very informal way. In 1994, David Norris came across this and decided he wanted to turn it into an art project to explore "the nature of identity and intimacy." He took an old AOL address from his buddy and set up a Hotmail account called I.M.Heart@hotmail.com with that same address.
Since then I.M.—which stands for "I'm"—has changed hands many times but has always maintained some continuity in its identity as a satire on the public's desire for intimacy on the web, unconditional love (through cyberbullying), and internet culture at large. I.M. has changed hands dozens of times, but has always been associated with its signature quote in the AOL greeting: "Hello. My name is I.M. Heart, and I'm a love addict."
While not all owners have continued to use the account as an art project, each owner provides a unique character to the identity of I.M.:
The Birth Of has provided many users with a historical timeline of such web trends as "MySpace" (a social networking site long before Facebook) and YouTube (another viral video platform). It is also one of only 100 accounts on Twitter to have over 1 million followers, and only 7% have more tweets than it
I.M. presently tweets at an average of 3 times a week, mostly with pictures of pictures posted by the Twitter community. He uses his Twitter account to promote other accounts that he finds interesting and has been known to dole out followers to users who intrigue him in some way.
I.M.'s current owner, James McGibney, is a controversial figure in the internet world. According to Business Insider, "McGibney has made a name for himself by brutally trolling the most hated people on the Internet. He’s happy to be an internet supervillain." He is the founder of the controversial website "Topix", infamous for its "Creepshot" section, which was called a “repository for the worst of humanity.” A past owner of I.M., Marcus Stephens, claimed in an interview with Business Insider that "McGibney would find pictures of underage girls on Facebook and claim they were 18."
In January 2016, McGibney purchased the defunct site betaBeat to relaunch a new site called Social Underground with himself as editor-in-chief. As of January 2017, Social Underground has been shut down.
I.M. Heart was born as an art project and has been passed from owner to owner over the years. Therefore, each account created for I.M. is unique to its owner's interests, tastes, and projects that he wishes to display on the internet (which are sometimes personal).
Over the years I.M. has been owned by a number of people and organizations, and has been seen under various pseudonyms:
I.M.'s owners have also created numerous derivative accounts to I.M.'s name, as well as accounts with the name "I'm Heart". Some of these accounts were created by McGibney himself, while others were created and maintained by other owners, who are no longer affiliated with I.M.:
The photography account IMAHO was introduced in January 2005 by former owner Paul Graves. It was a parody of Google Street View in the form of a leaf-clipping photo macro account (i.e., "Humans Over Hangovers").
Conclusion, I.M.'s first owner, had a running joke about his name referring to the conclusion of heroin addiction, and would often make reference to it in his tweets. After several months, he relinquished control of the account to McGibney.
I.M.'s third owner, James McGibney, began using I.M. in 2004 as a satire on social media at large through the use of internet memes and other popular culture references (such as TV shows and movies). He also often used it as an attempt at making his twitter feed more interesting by creating original posts (such as net artworks) or things that he thought were funny or interesting (including comments about himself).
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The Birth Of I.M. Heart