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every few months there's a panic about some "study" or other looking into "proana" communities but id honestly love to compile a comprehensive timeline of the subculture that formed around eating disorders online because how it's changed over time is SO wild
even the use of the term proana has changed SO much in the past 10 years, it encompassed anything from "i have an eating disorder and am ok with that, not recovering, and want to talk to people like me" to "actively furthering my ED on purpose"" like 'hard' edtwt today
NICE i found one of the really old sites that dates back to 2004. i know there was more before that though that just might not still be up
oh im invested now. here we fucking go
jesus christ this one has entries from people looking for "ana buddies" as recently as FEBRUARY SECOND OF THIS YEAR im genuinely shocked bc i used this site like. literally a whole decade ago
the chat room and forum are broken but the ana buddies section, shoutbox, and guest book still function
also links to a bunch of other sites, i thought blue dragonfly was older but the furthest post back is 2012. they do reference 'old bdf' though so the earlier site might have gotten taken down or switched owners
the oldest reference i can find for cerulean butterfly (which i think the name of blue dragonfly might be based off of? or other way around) is 2004, and this user is mentioned to have been around since "nearly the very beginning"
linked tapatalk group is still active as of today, but the vast majority of posts are older so it might be a few individuals asking around in a dead group
noplacetohide proboards dates back to 2008 and interestingly does not require a signup to view posts. anaangels proboards does and im not bothering with that
a few more dead tapatalk groups, dating mostly from 2015-2017
obviously the big one, myproana is still active as hell. there's also a few offshoots including mypancakeaddiction
according to this there's mentions of proana subculture rattling around since at least 2001, and were supposedly well-known enough at that time for people to have negative opinions of them http://fadingobsessions.com/foinsider/about-us.php
and then of course we cant forget starving in suburbia, a notorious 2014 movie about the horrors of proana but unintentionally kind of hilarious to some (myself included). was also notable for including REAL proana tumblr blogs IN THE MOVIE which were then harassed into deletion
oh my god there literally was a study about this in 2019 im losing my mind https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1750481319835643?journalCode=dcma
noplacetohide explicitly forbids "tips and tricks" and is a support forum which is p different from a lot of other sites around this time
also finding a few mentions of comorbid agoraphobia which is fascinating to me personally and probably literally nobody else on this planet. moving on
another page detailing the history of proana, this one seems to kind of mirror the stance that modern MPA holds (except for the hidden hardcore forum which is either those who are genuinely extreme in methods or traditional "pro") http://fadingobsessions.com/information/pro-ana-definition.php
yes im using the word hardcore here jokingly that one scene of SiS lives in my head rent free
myproana itself isn't actually as old as i remember, being created in 2012, but it's also changed owners several times
an article about proana communities dating back to 2001
https://web.archive.org/web/20100920234343/http://dir.salon.com/mwt/feature/2001/07/23/pro_ana
https://web.archive.org/web/20100920234343/http://dir.salon.com/mwt/feature/2001/07/23/pro_ana
a 2003 paper on the *ethics* of proana communities which is kind of wild to me. mentions knowledge of proana to the media in general in 2001 because of oprah?
https://web.archive.org/web/20090408031344/http://artsandscience1.concordia.ca/comm/shade/word/Weborexics.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/20090408031344/http://artsandscience1.concordia.ca/comm/shade/word/Weborexics.pdf
this also expands on proana communities that would be considered 'hard' by today's twitter standards, but notably differ in that they don't consider themselves to have eating disorders! they see their own anorexia as a completely voluntary lifestyle or means of control.
ah here's why it's so hard to find anything pre-2001 and i doubt anyone bothered to archive these sorts of sites
ah this turning point seems to be the reason for disclaimers of "we are not encouraging eating disorders, this is a place for those already afflicted"
apparently proana content was the subject of heated debate in the mid-90s as a freedom of speech issue including involvement from the ACLU which is AMAZING to me and i will absolutely be digging into that more
ok proana specifically was never taken up by any freedom of speech argument but the Communications Decency Act of 1999 led sites to display a blue ribbon in solidarity for freedom of speech which they believed included their content.
also worth noting a significant shift in proana mentality in the mid-2010s of "wow people looking for tips and tricks are so stupid for wanting to 'catch' anorexia" to "if people are trying to learn how to starve themselves they already have issues" esp on MPA
source from 2005 of a forum discussing blue dragonfly! even this early on an unrelated forum people are pointing out the merits of harm reduction tactics, one person even comparing it to harm reduction in addicts
https://www.sputnikmusic.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-304165.html
https://www.sputnikmusic.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-304165.html
some of these actually ARE archived, i am so happy to be wrong and working on this rn! https://twitter.com/daughterofbones/status/1358884633002184704
FINALLY found an article detailing the oprah winfrey show bringing pro-anorexia websites to the public eye
https://web.archive.org/web/20020804103630/http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/p.asp?WebPage_ID=382
https://web.archive.org/web/20020804103630/http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/p.asp?WebPage_ID=382
OOOOH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD WE HAVE A TIMELINE TO WORK OFF OF
https://wrldrels.org/2018/03/04/pro-ana-and-pro-mia-religious-groups/
https://wrldrels.org/2018/03/04/pro-ana-and-pro-mia-religious-groups/
side note- i think this might be the single most useful resource i've found since it explicitly details launch years of the grotto and project shapeshift. along with VERY very early descriptions of proana on Usenet
