March 14, 2023 • 32 mins
Before TikTok, Instagram and even – MySpace, party crew teens found ways to create communities online. One of these early social media sites was called Techno4.us — where Janice and Emmery both had profiles once upon a time. In T4’s heyday, party crew kids all over LA and beyond would connect through colorful and chaotic digital profiles where teens were showing their lives uncensored and on their own terms.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Um, dude, you guys have social media. Were you guys
like on my Space? Yeah? We had my Space. We
were on it all the time. And um, that's why
that's why we're getting showing computer class because we would
try to like log in while we were in class.
This is Alejandra, Emory's high school friend. Again. During our conversation,
we talked about who Emory was at home and at school.
(00:23):
But one part that stuck with me was when I
realized that Emory also lived a life online. Were you
guys on a site called techno for us? Yes, we
were on that too. What was your I don't remember anymore.
I wish I could tell you. Did Emory have one? Did? Yeah?
(00:43):
She did. I was hearing from people about Emory, but
I really wanted to find something from her directly. Some
digital trace from I Heearts, Michaels go to a a podcast network,
(01:30):
Vice and Elias Studios. This is Party Cruise, the untold story.
I'm Jenisamoca. I've already taken you through what a party
(01:56):
was like, talked about how we were policed, and now
I'm going to show you our digital reality. Because this
era in the New Millennium would change the game for
all future partying. This was when how you showed up
online started to become as important as how you showed
up in person. And though we weren't doing it on purpose,
(02:18):
we were showing our lives uncensored and on our own terms.
The website that I talked about with Alejandra Techno four
dot us or T four for short, because an early
two thousands social media site that was basically a giant party.
It was just a way to connect with everybody. It
(02:38):
was basically like a message board for party people. You
know your flyers or messaging. There was no swifting in
social media back then. There was Techno four data. It
was mostly Latin X teens living in LA messaging each
other on T four and the profiles were chaotic, filled
(02:58):
up with colorful funds than wacky spellings. The pages were
plastered with tons of pictures the crews holding up their
badges and girls doing que poses. It's how we chose
to stand out and get creative. I know this because
I was a member too profile name West Coast's Finest Mommy.
(03:24):
I think I was like fourteen when I jumped into
my first chat room. I was amazed at how far
I was able to reach people in different states. Other
than visiting my family in Peru and New Jersey, I
didn't really get to know other places, and by chatting
with different people, I was able to learn a lot.
I had a penpal, some white girl in Montana. I
(03:46):
also had a different penpal, a kid my age that
lived on a reservation in Arizona. I met them in
Yahoo chats. That's just to say how much I was
starting to live on the Internet, and I wonder if
for Emory it was like that too. I was curious
and I felt like there were no limits. Amazingly, T
(04:07):
four is still around, so last year I decided to
check it out to see what I could find. I
haven't been on there in oof sixteen years. Okay, i'm recording.
I made it to the Techno for Us homepage, which
was still active. It's still black and blue like I remember,
(04:29):
and I wanted to see if I could find Emory's
old profile. Okay, I'm to see you, Emory. Let's try Tears.
Let's try it. Let's try for you. On T four,
people use their party crew nicknames, so I started with
Emory's nickname Tears, and then we can try Tears with
(04:51):
a z or tears tears of a clown. All right,
this is not hers. I've never worked on a story
like this that brings so many personal memories. I'll tripe
in Vicious. Oh, here's a vicious Cherry. This is Cherry.
I typed in Vicious because of Emory's crew, the Vicious Ladies,
(05:13):
and I found the main head, Cherry. Cherry's profile picture
has the Vicious Lady's logo on it. It's a sparkly
pink and white Louis Vitan LV logo that sits on
top of the words vicious Ladies. I read what she
wrote about the Vicious Ladies on her profile at nothing
but a vicious thing repping them. Also fine, vicious ladies.
(05:36):
If you were part of a crew, you wrapped it hard.
This would be the one and only fame malicious rapping
for nothing but the best vicious and then vicious ladies.
Here we go. You got in contact with none other
than did see screaming Vicious ladies to the fullest, like
to party and have fun and just chill. Finally, I
(05:57):
found a picture of Emory Ry Go Destiny and Emery
Rocks all the boys all day, every day. There's a
picture of m Emery and her friend Destiny. Destiny's page
shows that she last logged on in the summer of
(06:18):
two thousand and six, a few months after Emory's death.
All Right, Amory Mounos forever in her hearts. It's a
tight shot of Emory and Destiny's faces, so it looks
like a selfie, maybe with a phone or a digital camera.
The lights above the girls are giant luorescent rectangles, the
(06:41):
kind you see in an office or in school. They
probably took the picture in class. Okay, so I'm gonna
save this picture one sec Destiny t four save. We
were unable to talk to any Vicious Ladies party crew members.
(07:04):
We did reach out to them, they either didn't respond
or declined to be interviewed. One told us through a
friend that it wouldn't be of any use to talk
to us. They did press right after Emory's death, and
her case is still unsolved. So going through these profiles
feels like the closest I got to understanding the Vicious
Lady's dynamics, just like my crew. The Lustful Ladies. They
(07:27):
gave each other shout outs, posted pictures of their friends,
and wrapped their crew to the fullest. In the end,
I couldn't find anything from Emory directly, but it did
take me back to that time. That world tfor feels
like this digital ghost town, like this online version of POMPEII.
(07:48):
All these profiles were frozen in time, capturing this new
era of the Internet where we could express ourselves online
without supervision. And it was like that for me too,
until it wasn't. My first long term relationship was with
a high school boy I connected with online, but the
relationship wasn't exactly what I expected. Once upon a time,
(08:13):
I worked it in and out in the city of Industry,
and I remember one day my boyfriend and I had
gone into a fight. I don't really remember about what,
and he just showed up at my job. He wanted
to make up or something like that. But when he
walked up, I was chatting with my male coworker, and
(08:34):
my coworker made a joke and I laughed. It was
very normal, and my boyfriend saw me laugh, he made
a face and he just turned around and stormed out,
and I got really stressed out. From the very beginning,
my boyfriend was really possessive. He didn't really want me
(08:56):
to have guy friends. Or even girlfriends who he felt
got in the way. He would call me at all
times to make sure he knew what I was doing,
and if I wasn't paying attention to my phone, I'd
come back to it and have thirty missed calls. He
was controlling about everything, including money, like he asked me
to co sign his car lease. I started to get
(09:19):
afraid of what he would do with all the information
about me sharing the story. I find myself getting protective
over my younger self and over all the other women
that I found themselves in my position. It was really
embarrassing in the cycle I couldn't break at the time,
I was scared that he would see a compliment someone
(09:40):
left on my MySpace page or a photo of me
with a guy on my T four profile, and we'd
have more fights, which could lead to a full day
of crying. So one day in two thousand and six,
I sat down, holed up all my profiles, my Space,
Facebook techno for us, and one by one I deleted everything,
(10:06):
all my photos, my posts, my friends, my party crew
years we're gone looking back now, those are the memories
I wish I had. As I was looking for traces
(10:28):
of Emery on Techno for Us I realized that maybe
I could also find traces of that time in my
life online. That's after the break. I do have a
(10:58):
few images that I printed out and stored in an album,
but otherwise the only pictures I have from that time
are with family, pictures with friends at school, and that
giant portrait my parents have of me in their living
room from my Kensaneta. It's like the good immigrant daughter
version of me has survived, enshrined at my parents place.
(11:22):
But this other, curious and more complex person I was
growing up is mostly gone. But maybe somewhere in the
Techno for Us Digital POMPEII, there is something from my
past I can find. And if there's one person who
could help me, it would be this man. How do
(11:45):
you explain you know, a Facebook before there was a Facebook,
MySpace before there was a MySpace. You know, this was
very la This is just very la, very teen centering.
This is Regal Rojas. He's the actual founder of Techno
for Us. For me, this is as big as meeting
(12:06):
Tom from my space. I actually can't log on to
my old T four profile. I don't remember the password
and don't have access to the old email address, so
I was hoping Rigo could help me access it again,
but first I had so many questions for him. I
was honestly shocked when I found out that he was
Latino and from la because nowadays I feel like it's
(12:30):
rare that a social network be tailored to a specific
community and founded by a member of that community. The
site wasn't anything fancy. The idea was that you could
connect virtually with people you met at parties in real life.
It was just a profile with messaging. That's really it.
(12:52):
And the theme evolved on its own to where, you know,
she went to a party and you wanted to connect
with some of the people that were at that party
or there, or that are going to be at the
next one. Just use technical But it was never Rego's
plan to make a social media site. He kind of
stumbled on it. Oh your home is very lovely, Thank you,
(13:14):
a lot of effort, disorganized, there's water, anything else you
may want, it's available. Rego in a family, came from
El Salvador when he was eight years old. In the eighties,
he settled in the North Hollywood area. In the mid nineties,
(13:34):
Rego became a student at Kelsey University Northridge, not far
from where he lived. He was a kind of studies major.
I was working in music right as a hobby. And
you know, there's new software coming out, new new devices, samplers, synthesizers,
and you become very good at it, connecting to think
the machines, and you become the technical guy in new
(13:58):
Google Friends. This is in the late nineties, right, the
Internet bubble is it's you know, it's building up and
people are excited about things. Regal was on the Internet
in the time of dial up connection, when images took
forever to load, no tweets, none of that ease and
lightning speed were used to now. But he still found
(14:20):
a way to communicate message. Sports were popular, right, So
I followed one the power Tools music board. Right here
you go, Ladies and gentlemen, bad Boy Bill, Hot Mix
number fourteen, It's power Tools riding on Power six, Humpty
Vision the Rock. Like many young Angelinos at that time,
(14:43):
he tuned into this radio show called the power Tools
Mix Show on Power one oh six, lots of house
techno and EDMA. I'll be in the mix up next,
Humpty Vision, bad Boy Bill in the mix all night long,
riding on power Tools boys. They also had a message
board where people would discuss and learn about new music.
(15:04):
Was that your first time kind of seeing that interaction
with different people and not the same physical space, you know?
It showed me that people can be very passionate about something.
The audience can communicate with each other and have a
voice in how to interpret the music. So he had
(15:31):
an idea. He and his DJ friends realized we needed
a website to promote our music. Rigo had an interest
in music and tech, and he wanted to know if
he can make a website himself. In March of two
thousand and three, five months before my space launched, he
purchased the domain name techno four dot us. He paid
(15:54):
seventy five dollars for two years. Then he spent the
next three months building the site. What was your visual
design idea for the website? UM? I wanted a dark
site with a bright contrasting color. Right, so it's black
and the brighter blue, sort of like that Dodger Blue.
(16:16):
Members didn't have to put any information except asl age, sex,
location my favorite thing though, So that's where a lot
of them could customize their their profiles. Again, a very
amateur mistake was I didn't take away their ability to
inject code. So it was a mistake that worked out
(16:37):
in my favor because now people wanted to change their code.
We could customize our profiles any way we wanted. Imagine
if you can change the colors of your profile page
on Instagram or have your favorite songue play when someone
visits your profile. That's what T four was like. So
I'm creating this site by myself writing code, but there's
(17:01):
no point to it. There's no audience to it. By
the summer of two thousand and three, the site is live,
but it still didn't have an audience. Rego was trying
to figure out how to promote it and seeing you
know the power Tools message board, is like, well can
I be that? Can I create that? Oh? Can I
make it better? One promotion idea he had, and this
(17:23):
is how you know it was early Internet, was to
tell people about the website at a party in person.
He had a friend that printed flyers like party flyers,
and he put t four on one of them as
a favorite Arigo. So in July of two thousand and three,
Rigo attended the party and it wasn't like the parties
(17:44):
that played house music that he was used to. This
is in south central LA. It's a backyard party on
a Friday night, summer night, and then gets hot. You know,
and people who are listening to loud New right, they're teenagers,
they're high school kids. Rego was new to this generation
(18:08):
of flyer parties. We know they're wearing these these tags,
these these laminated tags with their crew name and their name.
You know, kids stands into right and hip hop. But
I'm here trying to promote a techno site, right, So
(18:29):
I'm like, like, is this gonna work? Maybe at the
end of the party, the DJ would play a little
house music, a little electronic music, but it wasn't about that.
It was definitely just hip hop were dominant. The fact
that Rigo bought I'm promoted your al called techno for us,
(18:52):
just for it to become the social media site for
kids like me who liked hip hop, and it's just
so funny to me and also such a marker and
time for me as an Angelino and the millennial, a
time when the popular music among the youth shifted and
a time when our world became more digital and interconnected. Slowly,
(19:18):
T four started to spread in the party crew scene.
You see the logos on flyers, and people were curious.
So it drove some traffic to the site, but the
site would really get attention when Rigo began attending the
parties with his camera. People are happy to post for
their pictures and they started asking you, hey, take my picture.
(19:40):
He'd select around fifty pictures from the party and post
them on the site a few days later. Girls wearing
matching outfits, guys showing off their badges. People start asking, hey,
where are the pictures. I'm like, okay, hold on, let
me let me work on them. So, you know, you
pick out the best ones, you edit them, and you
put them up and the pictures start being shared everywhere, right,
(20:04):
and the membership starts going up. People were always looking
for a good picture, whether it was to upgrade their
profile pictures or just save them at an album. And
Rio could see who wanted to see those pictures. So
you start seeing, you know, different plots on the map
and it's red hot in La, right, and it's like, wow,
(20:28):
this isn't La thing. But wait, there's a group in Texas.
How did that happen? Right? So well, people from California
have friends in Texas, right, and they share it, they
see group of people, they join, and now they start
building community. I was logging on all the time, even
(20:50):
at the school library during lunch or last period, just
to get onto four and message with my friends online.
You get to the point where lau is d blocks
the site because the students they're going into the library,
they're going into the computer lab, and they're just on
the site talking to each other, and we get blocked. Okay,
(21:12):
do you know what high school still thought? Every every
school high school, we were blocked at the district level.
We can't confirm this, but I remember my Space was
blocked at my school by the end of my senior year.
What was the moment where you were like, oh shit,
this is getting bigger than I thought. Um, when the
(21:34):
servers begin to crash because there's just so many people
trying to log in. In two thousand and three, the
membership went up from fifty to over six hundred. In
two thousand and four, the year I joined, an average
there were sixteen hundred members online at the same time.
(21:54):
In December two thousand and five, around the time that
Emery would have been a member, there was on average
over three thousand members online at the same time before
peaked at about two thousand and six, two thousand and seven.
You know, we're talking about maybe twenty five thousand people
a day, you know, four to five thousand people at
(22:15):
any moment, and Rigo was making a pretty good living
off T four. I never went into my college career
because of T four. Right, so the work I did
on T four derailed anything to do with Chicano studies.
I was going to be an activist. I thought, let
me change the system from within, you know, let me
(22:38):
let me go work in immigration services, let me go
work in social services. I took one interview in that
and I didn't even respond to anything any follow up
on that because I was already working on T four.
I mean, in a way, you still like maintain the
community aspect of like activists. I mean, I understood what
(22:59):
was going on, and I understood, you know, the way
that these kids wanted to express themselves and have fun.
Rego still keeps Tea for running. He says it costs
one hundred dollars a month to keep it going. He
keeps it running for himself and for the handful of
people that continue to log on. I have a very
(23:21):
tiny platform that has an incredible loyal following. Right, I mean,
you go in there now and there's forty five people
on I went in there last night there was forty four.
There you go, I'm exaggerating. I'm exaggerating, right, I was
just I was a little shocked, to be right, you
have people that we're at that first party. I can
(23:44):
think of one person that was that that first party
that's on there actively. It provides a very basic service,
which is people connecting. Right. People will always need to
connect to people, and that's why all these social media
sites are successful. Our digital footprint will last as long
as we wanted to. Our digital footprint will last as
(24:09):
long as we want it to. I chose to delete
mine in two thousand and six when I did that
whole purge I mentioned because of that controlling ex boyfriend.
And as I continue getting older, it's hard to reconcile
that a lot of us may never get it back.
It feels like such a loss that I can't access
(24:30):
my old profile to see if it's even still around.
But after talking to Rigo, he does me a favor.
He resent my password so I can lug in. So
let me lug in let sech. That's after the break. Okay,
(25:08):
I found my profile. I recorded myself going through my
profile for the first time, and it instantly brought me
back to two thousand and four. It's a picture of me.
I'm pretty sure I was not eighteen, but I made
myself eighteen at the time. My profile picture was not
(25:29):
one of me at a party. It's a picture I
have printed out somewhere, but it was still wild to
see it online. I'm in high school. This was taken
I was probably like seventeen. I think I'm wearing like
a sparkly pink rhinestone heart necklace and then wearing Hiphuger
(25:51):
pants with a hip Hoger belt that's like a silver
chain with another pink rhinestone to heart. I know I
should have kept that belt because apparently I could probably
sell it to urban outfitters for like one hundred dollars.
So it turns out I still have my profile picture,
(26:12):
but I must have deleted my layout when I deleted
all my other social media coming my profile was pretty bare.
It was just the basic black background with that Dodger
blue lettering. But my profile did offer some information. It
says asked for your gender. I have female city. I
put role in Heights a member since and it says
(26:35):
June twenty seventh, two thousand and four profile hits. I've
had twelve thousand, forty eight profile hits and my last
log in was July tenth, two thousand and six, at
one twenty seven am. The last time I logged in
was when I deleted all my other social media profiles.
(26:55):
I clicked around the page to see if there was
anything else, and I found my journal section. Did I
ever use a journal? Oh my god? How embarrassing. Um,
Oh my god, this is so embarrassing. There were three
whole entries. Okay, so it's here. The first journal mentry
(27:15):
I wrote was July seventeenth, two thousand and four, at
five seventeen am. Gosh, and I wrote, m well, it's
about five o eight am and I'm up exclamation points tool.
I've been thinking about stuff lately. But yeah, damn, it's
(27:35):
five to eleven now. Lol. I better get in bed
so my mama doesn't get all mad and shish. For now,
I'm out show was. I ended up writing more in
that same entry. Damn the drama, Fuck the haters. We
gotta just live life, but sometimes you know, I wish
there was someone I could come home because the game
(27:58):
gets old after a long while. Lol, trust me, then
there done that all right? For real? I'm outros. I
have no idea what I was, who I was writing about.
The game gets hold after a long while, embarrassing. There
was another journal from July twenty eighth, two thousand and four. Okay,
(28:20):
I wrote, ah, I finished making the tags and I'm
freaking board la la la la, will let's see um nothing.
I'm out, lessful ladies leaving this mofo. I think a
lot about how easy it is to delete our memories
my mask. Clicking or highlighting an entire page of code
(28:44):
and pressing one key delete it felt less ceremonial than
burning physical images or tossing an entire album with pictures away.
I guess that's why it felt painless at the time.
But what I didn't realize was how permanent one click
can be. It's more than old photos. Looking through it.
(29:08):
T four is really an archive. It's not organized or
easily searchable, but you can see firsthand accounts of how
we lived. It seems like Emory's profile is gone. She
didn't leave a digital footprint behind, at least one that
I could find, but I can't help. But wonder did
she delete it herself? What was her reason? Was it
(29:33):
a way of protecting herself like I had to, and
losing her profile? It isn't just a loss of her
photos or her words. It's another missing layer of who
she was, what her world looked like, what she felt.
Now it's up to other people to fill in the blanks,
(29:54):
and I feel an obligation to try because when it
comes to subcultures or to communities of color, especially young
women of color, historically, it's often up to us to
remind the world that we exist. While I couldn't find
anything online that hinted at what happened to Emory, a
(30:15):
few months into looking at her case, we met someone
who thought he could help Emory's family after hearing them
speak and giving me some insights as to what happened.
I do believe there's additional investigation that needs to be conducted,
and for the first time we hear from Emory's parents,
like I said, I was, I wasn't there, you know,
(30:38):
like to where I rich I would I was, And
you know she was? She was. She was a happy child,
and I know she would cry and saying Where's my dad,
Where's my dad? But because I wasn't there, that's next time.
(31:06):
This episode was written, reported, and hosted by me Janasamoka.
Our show is produced and reported by Sofia Pelissa car
Victoria Lejandro, and Kyle Chang and edited by Antonio Seihilo.
Additional editing by Carlina Dalbo and Annie Ablis, fact checking
(31:26):
by Nadia Bautista, Sound design and original music composition by
Kyle Murdoch. Our supervising producer is Janet Lee. Art by
Julie Ruiz and Victuakllon. Our executive producer from Vice Audio
is Kate Osborne. Our executive producers from Elias Studios are
Antonio Seihido and Leo gi. Our Vice president of Podcasts
(31:51):
from Elias Studios is Shana and Naomi Kracso. Special thanks
to the UCLA Department of Communication Archives for access to
their news collection Party Cruise. The Innsold Story is a
production of Elias Studios in Vice Audio in partnership with
Ihearts micro Fuda podcast Network. For more podcasts, listen to
the iHeartRadio apps, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
(32:14):
your favorite shows and hey, were you and a party crew? Senator,
party flyers or photos, I'd love to see them, Even
a voice message about your memories, anything you can send
us a message or a picture at party cruise at
Elias Studios dot com. Support for this podcast is made
possible by Gordon and Donna Crawford, who believe that quality
(32:35):
journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live. This
program is made possible in part by the Corporation for
Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.
Um, dude, you guys have social media. Were you guys
like on my Space? Yeah? We had my Space. We
were on it all the time. And um, that's why
that's why we're getting showing computer class because we would
try to like log in while we were in class.
This is Alejandra, Emory's high school friend. Again. During our conversation,
we talked about who Emory was at home and at school.
(00:23):
But one part that stuck with me was when I
realized that Emory also lived a life online. Were you
guys on a site called techno for us? Yes, we
were on that too. What was your I don't remember anymore.
I wish I could tell you. Did Emory have one? Did? Yeah?
(00:43):
She did. I was hearing from people about Emory, but
I really wanted to find something from her directly. Some
digital trace from I Heearts, Michaels go to a a podcast network,
(01:30):
Vice and Elias Studios. This is Party Cruise, the untold story.
I'm Jenisamoca. I've already taken you through what a party
(01:56):
was like, talked about how we were policed, and now
I'm going to show you our digital reality. Because this
era in the New Millennium would change the game for
all future partying. This was when how you showed up
online started to become as important as how you showed
up in person. And though we weren't doing it on purpose,
(02:18):
we were showing our lives uncensored and on our own terms.
The website that I talked about with Alejandra Techno four
dot us or T four for short, because an early
two thousands social media site that was basically a giant party.
It was just a way to connect with everybody. It
(02:38):
was basically like a message board for party people. You
know your flyers or messaging. There was no swifting in
social media back then. There was Techno four data. It
was mostly Latin X teens living in LA messaging each
other on T four and the profiles were chaotic, filled
(02:58):
up with colorful funds than wacky spellings. The pages were
plastered with tons of pictures the crews holding up their
badges and girls doing que poses. It's how we chose
to stand out and get creative. I know this because
I was a member too profile name West Coast's Finest Mommy.
(03:24):
I think I was like fourteen when I jumped into
my first chat room. I was amazed at how far
I was able to reach people in different states. Other
than visiting my family in Peru and New Jersey, I
didn't really get to know other places, and by chatting
with different people, I was able to learn a lot.
I had a penpal, some white girl in Montana. I
(03:46):
also had a different penpal, a kid my age that
lived on a reservation in Arizona. I met them in
Yahoo chats. That's just to say how much I was
starting to live on the Internet, and I wonder if
for Emory it was like that too. I was curious
and I felt like there were no limits. Amazingly, T
(04:07):
four is still around, so last year I decided to
check it out to see what I could find. I
haven't been on there in oof sixteen years. Okay, i'm recording.
I made it to the Techno for Us homepage, which
was still active. It's still black and blue like I remember,
(04:29):
and I wanted to see if I could find Emory's
old profile. Okay, I'm to see you, Emory. Let's try Tears.
Let's try it. Let's try for you. On T four,
people use their party crew nicknames, so I started with
Emory's nickname Tears, and then we can try Tears with
(04:51):
a z or tears tears of a clown. All right,
this is not hers. I've never worked on a story
like this that brings so many personal memories. I'll tripe
in Vicious. Oh, here's a vicious Cherry. This is Cherry.
I typed in Vicious because of Emory's crew, the Vicious Ladies,
(05:13):
and I found the main head, Cherry. Cherry's profile picture
has the Vicious Lady's logo on it. It's a sparkly
pink and white Louis Vitan LV logo that sits on
top of the words vicious Ladies. I read what she
wrote about the Vicious Ladies on her profile at nothing
but a vicious thing repping them. Also fine, vicious ladies.
(05:36):
If you were part of a crew, you wrapped it hard.
This would be the one and only fame malicious rapping
for nothing but the best vicious and then vicious ladies.
Here we go. You got in contact with none other
than did see screaming Vicious ladies to the fullest, like
to party and have fun and just chill. Finally, I
(05:57):
found a picture of Emory Ry Go Destiny and Emery
Rocks all the boys all day, every day. There's a
picture of m Emery and her friend Destiny. Destiny's page
shows that she last logged on in the summer of
(06:18):
two thousand and six, a few months after Emory's death.
All Right, Amory Mounos forever in her hearts. It's a
tight shot of Emory and Destiny's faces, so it looks
like a selfie, maybe with a phone or a digital camera.
The lights above the girls are giant luorescent rectangles, the
(06:41):
kind you see in an office or in school. They
probably took the picture in class. Okay, so I'm gonna
save this picture one sec Destiny t four save. We
were unable to talk to any Vicious Ladies party crew members.
(07:04):
We did reach out to them, they either didn't respond
or declined to be interviewed. One told us through a
friend that it wouldn't be of any use to talk
to us. They did press right after Emory's death, and
her case is still unsolved. So going through these profiles
feels like the closest I got to understanding the Vicious
Lady's dynamics, just like my crew. The Lustful Ladies. They
(07:27):
gave each other shout outs, posted pictures of their friends,
and wrapped their crew to the fullest. In the end,
I couldn't find anything from Emory directly, but it did
take me back to that time. That world tfor feels
like this digital ghost town, like this online version of POMPEII.
(07:48):
All these profiles were frozen in time, capturing this new
era of the Internet where we could express ourselves online
without supervision. And it was like that for me too,
until it wasn't. My first long term relationship was with
a high school boy I connected with online, but the
relationship wasn't exactly what I expected. Once upon a time,
(08:13):
I worked it in and out in the city of Industry,
and I remember one day my boyfriend and I had
gone into a fight. I don't really remember about what,
and he just showed up at my job. He wanted
to make up or something like that. But when he
walked up, I was chatting with my male coworker, and
(08:34):
my coworker made a joke and I laughed. It was
very normal, and my boyfriend saw me laugh, he made
a face and he just turned around and stormed out,
and I got really stressed out. From the very beginning,
my boyfriend was really possessive. He didn't really want me
(08:56):
to have guy friends. Or even girlfriends who he felt
got in the way. He would call me at all
times to make sure he knew what I was doing,
and if I wasn't paying attention to my phone, I'd
come back to it and have thirty missed calls. He
was controlling about everything, including money, like he asked me
to co sign his car lease. I started to get
(09:19):
afraid of what he would do with all the information
about me sharing the story. I find myself getting protective
over my younger self and over all the other women
that I found themselves in my position. It was really
embarrassing in the cycle I couldn't break at the time,
I was scared that he would see a compliment someone
(09:40):
left on my MySpace page or a photo of me
with a guy on my T four profile, and we'd
have more fights, which could lead to a full day
of crying. So one day in two thousand and six,
I sat down, holed up all my profiles, my Space,
Facebook techno for us, and one by one I deleted everything,
(10:06):
all my photos, my posts, my friends, my party crew
years we're gone looking back now, those are the memories
I wish I had. As I was looking for traces
(10:28):
of Emery on Techno for Us I realized that maybe
I could also find traces of that time in my
life online. That's after the break. I do have a
(10:58):
few images that I printed out and stored in an album,
but otherwise the only pictures I have from that time
are with family, pictures with friends at school, and that
giant portrait my parents have of me in their living
room from my Kensaneta. It's like the good immigrant daughter
version of me has survived, enshrined at my parents place.
(11:22):
But this other, curious and more complex person I was
growing up is mostly gone. But maybe somewhere in the
Techno for Us Digital POMPEII, there is something from my
past I can find. And if there's one person who
could help me, it would be this man. How do
(11:45):
you explain you know, a Facebook before there was a Facebook,
MySpace before there was a MySpace. You know, this was
very la This is just very la, very teen centering.
This is Regal Rojas. He's the actual founder of Techno
for Us. For me, this is as big as meeting
(12:06):
Tom from my space. I actually can't log on to
my old T four profile. I don't remember the password
and don't have access to the old email address, so
I was hoping Rigo could help me access it again,
but first I had so many questions for him. I
was honestly shocked when I found out that he was
Latino and from la because nowadays I feel like it's
(12:30):
rare that a social network be tailored to a specific
community and founded by a member of that community. The
site wasn't anything fancy. The idea was that you could
connect virtually with people you met at parties in real life.
It was just a profile with messaging. That's really it.
(12:52):
And the theme evolved on its own to where, you know,
she went to a party and you wanted to connect
with some of the people that were at that party
or there, or that are going to be at the
next one. Just use technical But it was never Rego's
plan to make a social media site. He kind of
stumbled on it. Oh your home is very lovely, Thank you,
(13:14):
a lot of effort, disorganized, there's water, anything else you
may want, it's available. Rego in a family, came from
El Salvador when he was eight years old. In the eighties,
he settled in the North Hollywood area. In the mid nineties,
(13:34):
Rego became a student at Kelsey University Northridge, not far
from where he lived. He was a kind of studies major.
I was working in music right as a hobby. And
you know, there's new software coming out, new new devices, samplers, synthesizers,
and you become very good at it, connecting to think
the machines, and you become the technical guy in new
(13:58):
Google Friends. This is in the late nineties, right, the
Internet bubble is it's you know, it's building up and
people are excited about things. Regal was on the Internet
in the time of dial up connection, when images took
forever to load, no tweets, none of that ease and
lightning speed were used to now. But he still found
(14:20):
a way to communicate message. Sports were popular, right, So
I followed one the power Tools music board. Right here
you go, Ladies and gentlemen, bad Boy Bill, Hot Mix
number fourteen, It's power Tools riding on Power six, Humpty
Vision the Rock. Like many young Angelinos at that time,
(14:43):
he tuned into this radio show called the power Tools
Mix Show on Power one oh six, lots of house
techno and EDMA. I'll be in the mix up next,
Humpty Vision, bad Boy Bill in the mix all night long,
riding on power Tools boys. They also had a message
board where people would discuss and learn about new music.
(15:04):
Was that your first time kind of seeing that interaction
with different people and not the same physical space, you know?
It showed me that people can be very passionate about something.
The audience can communicate with each other and have a
voice in how to interpret the music. So he had
(15:31):
an idea. He and his DJ friends realized we needed
a website to promote our music. Rigo had an interest
in music and tech, and he wanted to know if
he can make a website himself. In March of two
thousand and three, five months before my space launched, he
purchased the domain name techno four dot us. He paid
(15:54):
seventy five dollars for two years. Then he spent the
next three months building the site. What was your visual
design idea for the website? UM? I wanted a dark
site with a bright contrasting color. Right, so it's black
and the brighter blue, sort of like that Dodger Blue.
(16:16):
Members didn't have to put any information except asl age, sex,
location my favorite thing though, So that's where a lot
of them could customize their their profiles. Again, a very
amateur mistake was I didn't take away their ability to
inject code. So it was a mistake that worked out
(16:37):
in my favor because now people wanted to change their code.
We could customize our profiles any way we wanted. Imagine
if you can change the colors of your profile page
on Instagram or have your favorite songue play when someone
visits your profile. That's what T four was like. So
I'm creating this site by myself writing code, but there's
(17:01):
no point to it. There's no audience to it. By
the summer of two thousand and three, the site is live,
but it still didn't have an audience. Rego was trying
to figure out how to promote it and seeing you
know the power Tools message board, is like, well can
I be that? Can I create that? Oh? Can I
make it better? One promotion idea he had, and this
(17:23):
is how you know it was early Internet, was to
tell people about the website at a party in person.
He had a friend that printed flyers like party flyers,
and he put t four on one of them as
a favorite Arigo. So in July of two thousand and three,
Rigo attended the party and it wasn't like the parties
(17:44):
that played house music that he was used to. This
is in south central LA. It's a backyard party on
a Friday night, summer night, and then gets hot. You know,
and people who are listening to loud New right, they're teenagers,
they're high school kids. Rego was new to this generation
(18:08):
of flyer parties. We know they're wearing these these tags,
these these laminated tags with their crew name and their name.
You know, kids stands into right and hip hop. But
I'm here trying to promote a techno site, right, So
(18:29):
I'm like, like, is this gonna work? Maybe at the
end of the party, the DJ would play a little
house music, a little electronic music, but it wasn't about that.
It was definitely just hip hop were dominant. The fact
that Rigo bought I'm promoted your al called techno for us,
(18:52):
just for it to become the social media site for
kids like me who liked hip hop, and it's just
so funny to me and also such a marker and
time for me as an Angelino and the millennial, a
time when the popular music among the youth shifted and
a time when our world became more digital and interconnected. Slowly,
(19:18):
T four started to spread in the party crew scene.
You see the logos on flyers, and people were curious.
So it drove some traffic to the site, but the
site would really get attention when Rigo began attending the
parties with his camera. People are happy to post for
their pictures and they started asking you, hey, take my picture.
(19:40):
He'd select around fifty pictures from the party and post
them on the site a few days later. Girls wearing
matching outfits, guys showing off their badges. People start asking, hey,
where are the pictures. I'm like, okay, hold on, let
me let me work on them. So, you know, you
pick out the best ones, you edit them, and you
put them up and the pictures start being shared everywhere, right,
(20:04):
and the membership starts going up. People were always looking
for a good picture, whether it was to upgrade their
profile pictures or just save them at an album. And
Rio could see who wanted to see those pictures. So
you start seeing, you know, different plots on the map
and it's red hot in La, right, and it's like, wow,
(20:28):
this isn't La thing. But wait, there's a group in Texas.
How did that happen? Right? So well, people from California
have friends in Texas, right, and they share it, they
see group of people, they join, and now they start
building community. I was logging on all the time, even
(20:50):
at the school library during lunch or last period, just
to get onto four and message with my friends online.
You get to the point where lau is d blocks
the site because the students they're going into the library,
they're going into the computer lab, and they're just on
the site talking to each other, and we get blocked. Okay,
(21:12):
do you know what high school still thought? Every every
school high school, we were blocked at the district level.
We can't confirm this, but I remember my Space was
blocked at my school by the end of my senior year.
What was the moment where you were like, oh shit,
this is getting bigger than I thought. Um, when the
(21:34):
servers begin to crash because there's just so many people
trying to log in. In two thousand and three, the
membership went up from fifty to over six hundred. In
two thousand and four, the year I joined, an average
there were sixteen hundred members online at the same time.
(21:54):
In December two thousand and five, around the time that
Emery would have been a member, there was on average
over three thousand members online at the same time before
peaked at about two thousand and six, two thousand and seven.
You know, we're talking about maybe twenty five thousand people
a day, you know, four to five thousand people at
(22:15):
any moment, and Rigo was making a pretty good living
off T four. I never went into my college career
because of T four. Right, so the work I did
on T four derailed anything to do with Chicano studies.
I was going to be an activist. I thought, let
me change the system from within, you know, let me
(22:38):
let me go work in immigration services, let me go
work in social services. I took one interview in that
and I didn't even respond to anything any follow up
on that because I was already working on T four.
I mean, in a way, you still like maintain the
community aspect of like activists. I mean, I understood what
(22:59):
was going on, and I understood, you know, the way
that these kids wanted to express themselves and have fun.
Rego still keeps Tea for running. He says it costs
one hundred dollars a month to keep it going. He
keeps it running for himself and for the handful of
people that continue to log on. I have a very
(23:21):
tiny platform that has an incredible loyal following. Right, I mean,
you go in there now and there's forty five people
on I went in there last night there was forty four.
There you go, I'm exaggerating. I'm exaggerating, right, I was
just I was a little shocked, to be right, you
have people that we're at that first party. I can
(23:44):
think of one person that was that that first party
that's on there actively. It provides a very basic service,
which is people connecting. Right. People will always need to
connect to people, and that's why all these social media
sites are successful. Our digital footprint will last as long
as we wanted to. Our digital footprint will last as
(24:09):
long as we want it to. I chose to delete
mine in two thousand and six when I did that
whole purge I mentioned because of that controlling ex boyfriend.
And as I continue getting older, it's hard to reconcile
that a lot of us may never get it back.
It feels like such a loss that I can't access
(24:30):
my old profile to see if it's even still around.
But after talking to Rigo, he does me a favor.
He resent my password so I can lug in. So
let me lug in let sech. That's after the break. Okay,
(25:08):
I found my profile. I recorded myself going through my
profile for the first time, and it instantly brought me
back to two thousand and four. It's a picture of me.
I'm pretty sure I was not eighteen, but I made
myself eighteen at the time. My profile picture was not
(25:29):
one of me at a party. It's a picture I
have printed out somewhere, but it was still wild to
see it online. I'm in high school. This was taken
I was probably like seventeen. I think I'm wearing like
a sparkly pink rhinestone heart necklace and then wearing Hiphuger
(25:51):
pants with a hip Hoger belt that's like a silver
chain with another pink rhinestone to heart. I know I
should have kept that belt because apparently I could probably
sell it to urban outfitters for like one hundred dollars.
So it turns out I still have my profile picture,
(26:12):
but I must have deleted my layout when I deleted
all my other social media coming my profile was pretty bare.
It was just the basic black background with that Dodger
blue lettering. But my profile did offer some information. It
says asked for your gender. I have female city. I
put role in Heights a member since and it says
(26:35):
June twenty seventh, two thousand and four profile hits. I've
had twelve thousand, forty eight profile hits and my last
log in was July tenth, two thousand and six, at
one twenty seven am. The last time I logged in
was when I deleted all my other social media profiles.
(26:55):
I clicked around the page to see if there was
anything else, and I found my journal section. Did I
ever use a journal? Oh my god? How embarrassing. Um,
Oh my god, this is so embarrassing. There were three
whole entries. Okay, so it's here. The first journal mentry
(27:15):
I wrote was July seventeenth, two thousand and four, at
five seventeen am. Gosh, and I wrote, m well, it's
about five o eight am and I'm up exclamation points tool.
I've been thinking about stuff lately. But yeah, damn, it's
(27:35):
five to eleven now. Lol. I better get in bed
so my mama doesn't get all mad and shish. For now,
I'm out show was. I ended up writing more in
that same entry. Damn the drama, Fuck the haters. We
gotta just live life, but sometimes you know, I wish
there was someone I could come home because the game
(27:58):
gets old after a long while. Lol, trust me, then
there done that all right? For real? I'm outros. I
have no idea what I was, who I was writing about.
The game gets hold after a long while, embarrassing. There
was another journal from July twenty eighth, two thousand and four. Okay,
(28:20):
I wrote, ah, I finished making the tags and I'm
freaking board la la la la, will let's see um nothing.
I'm out, lessful ladies leaving this mofo. I think a
lot about how easy it is to delete our memories
my mask. Clicking or highlighting an entire page of code
(28:44):
and pressing one key delete it felt less ceremonial than
burning physical images or tossing an entire album with pictures away.
I guess that's why it felt painless at the time.
But what I didn't realize was how permanent one click
can be. It's more than old photos. Looking through it.
(29:08):
T four is really an archive. It's not organized or
easily searchable, but you can see firsthand accounts of how
we lived. It seems like Emory's profile is gone. She
didn't leave a digital footprint behind, at least one that
I could find, but I can't help. But wonder did
she delete it herself? What was her reason? Was it
(29:33):
a way of protecting herself like I had to, and
losing her profile? It isn't just a loss of her
photos or her words. It's another missing layer of who
she was, what her world looked like, what she felt.
Now it's up to other people to fill in the blanks,
(29:54):
and I feel an obligation to try because when it
comes to subcultures or to communities of color, especially young
women of color, historically, it's often up to us to
remind the world that we exist. While I couldn't find
anything online that hinted at what happened to Emory, a
(30:15):
few months into looking at her case, we met someone
who thought he could help Emory's family after hearing them
speak and giving me some insights as to what happened.
I do believe there's additional investigation that needs to be conducted,
and for the first time we hear from Emory's parents,
like I said, I was, I wasn't there, you know,
(30:38):
like to where I rich I would I was, And
you know she was? She was. She was a happy child,
and I know she would cry and saying Where's my dad,
Where's my dad? But because I wasn't there, that's next time.
(31:06):
This episode was written, reported, and hosted by me Janasamoka.
Our show is produced and reported by Sofia Pelissa car
Victoria Lejandro, and Kyle Chang and edited by Antonio Seihilo.
Additional editing by Carlina Dalbo and Annie Ablis, fact checking
(31:26):
by Nadia Bautista, Sound design and original music composition by
Kyle Murdoch. Our supervising producer is Janet Lee. Art by
Julie Ruiz and Victuakllon. Our executive producer from Vice Audio
is Kate Osborne. Our executive producers from Elias Studios are
Antonio Seihido and Leo gi. Our Vice president of Podcasts
(31:51):
from Elias Studios is Shana and Naomi Kracso. Special thanks
to the UCLA Department of Communication Archives for access to
their news collection Party Cruise. The Innsold Story is a
production of Elias Studios in Vice Audio in partnership with
Ihearts micro Fuda podcast Network. For more podcasts, listen to
the iHeartRadio apps, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
(32:14):
your favorite shows and hey, were you and a party crew? Senator,
party flyers or photos, I'd love to see them, Even
a voice message about your memories, anything you can send
us a message or a picture at party cruise at
Elias Studios dot com. Support for this podcast is made
possible by Gordon and Donna Crawford, who believe that quality
(32:35):
journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live. This
program is made possible in part by the Corporation for
Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com