Vampire Freaks!

-Are you a mallgoth, cybergoth, emo, metalhead, or punk? Well, if you are, then there’s an online haven just for you. And if you aren’t… who cares? You’re mainstream-VampireFreaks.com provides a cyber community dedicated to self-proclaimed “gothic industrial” peoples. It can best be described as the vampire version of Myspace.com. The site has over a million registered members and receives about three million page views a day. This online community is quite successful (considering its name), and attracts a diverse group of vampires.
The idea of a social website for the vampire world may seem silly, but it actually makes a lot of sense. There are no such creatures as vampires on Earth, but there is a following of people who portray the lifestyles of vampires. These people obviously will be rejected by mainstream society and not be considered “normal”. Because most people don’t consider themselves vampires, the vampire population is small. I would also assume that all of the vampires in the world don’t live in one location, so that would mean that a vampire would have a hard time being around a good sized population of other vampires. Being a follower of this vampire cult must be lonely.
In today’s world no one has to be truly lonely. All anyone has to do is acquire an Internet connection, and they can be connected to everything: information, people, music, movies, pictures, etc. This website, VampireFreak.com, is definitely a perfect way for a vampire individual to be around other vampires just like themselves. The lonely vampire registers, creates a profile, uploads a picture, gives some personal information, and then an entire vampire community can reach him or her. Being in such a small population such as the vampire one would cause its members to need to interact with one another, and VampireFreak.com lets them do just that.
Members of VampireFreak.com range from the ages thirteen (the minimum age allowed) to over forty. Men and women are both part of this community, and profiles state that users are located in places such as Poland, France, Texas, and China. This website has brought together a vast number of vampire followers and let them talk with each other, see each other, and feel more at home with themselves by seeing so many others just like them.
Jethro Berleson created VampireFreaks.com in 1999, as his own personal homepage, and over the next eight years it has conglomerated into a website with over a million homepages for vampires across the world. Browsing through the profiles is very interesting. The pictures alone of the users are very bizarre and creative, but the text found on the profiles is even more out of the ordinary. The user PlutosKiss describes the Earth he lives in as a “Rancid oven”, and another user displays tattoos of pentagrams on his profile background. While these profile examples may promote the VampireFreak title, a lot of users list mainstream bands, and shopping as their interests. A lot of the users on this site are just like anyone else but with a Vampire twist. I am sure Jethro is happy at how huge his creation has become, but he is probably even happier that so many vampires and industrial gothic people can come together in one place and thrive upon the community they have just like any other community.