When the Voice of an Entire Generation Fell Silent
Even today, people I don’t really know still ask me—by email, letter, and by shouting through open windows—what actually happened to AMY&PINK. The portal of good cheer. The party ship of Berlin’s newcomers. The voice of a generation that never wanted to grow up, partied for three days straight at Berghain, and woke up one morning in the ruins of their own denial of reality.
The reflexive answer to the highly individual question of why AMY&PINK no longer exists is: No idea.
And that wouldn’t even be a lie. Because I really don’t know. Maybe it just happened that way at some point. Maybe there was no longer any place for it in today’s media world. Maybe things just have to end at some point before they are kept alive artificially (even longer) for reasons that are incomprehensible.
AMY&PINK saw the light of day in 2007 as the successor to my private blog, Tokyopunk, just as I was on my way to Berlin to begin my training as a designer in the field of conception and visualization at a digital new media agency. Everything was new, everything was exciting, everything in my life suddenly revolved around the German capital and the colorful people who bustled around in it.
I filled my new project with personal stories, finds from the internet, and the occasional fresh music video, and found passionate writers such as Hannah, Caro, Ines, Misha, Wenke, Sara, Meltem, Jana, Daniela, and Leni to take the site to the next level. AMY&PINK transformed from a small blog into one of the nation’s most widely read online magazines.
In the early years of the new decade, AMY&PINK was the digital go-to for young rebels, hipsters, and avant-gardists—and those who wanted to be just that, or at least know what these chaotic guys were up to and spouting nonsense about.
We were invited by brands such as Mercedes, Microsoft, and Deutsche Telekom to events throughout Germany and around the world: New York, Toronto, London. Rome, Shenzhen, Los Angeles. Lisbon, Monaco, Las Vegas. To get drunk there with Kendrick Lamar, Tokio Hotel, and Frank Ocean. And all because we wrote strange things on the internet, constantly used swear words, and there were people who wanted to read exactly that.
And every now and then there were bare breasts to be seen. Or girls throwing up. Or swastikas made of cocaine. The more provocative, the better. The press loved and hated us at the same time—much like our readers.
Unfortunately, the problem was that I continuously maneuvered AMY&PINK into a spiral of what the fucks
from which I soon couldn’t get the site out. At first, everything was funny, ironic, and over the top, but at some point a completely far-fetched professionalization of the content took hold. On the one hand, we had to be even more outrageous than everyone else to keep readers interested; on the other hand, advertisers demanded fewer exposed genitals on the homepage.
On top of that, the Wild West days of the internet were over by the mid-2010s. Any visual content that wasn’t contractually approved by the copyright holder, rights manager, and preferably three to twelve additional lawyers couldn’t be published. The site lost its visual punch because everything consisted of official press photos, the texts became increasingly absurd and unrealistic, and AMY&PINK transformed from a radiant rock star into a washed-up madman who drunkenly assured strangers on the street that he was still cool—really now, you, burp, stupid cunts!
With the departure of important AMY&PINK authors, the diversity of voices that had long ensured balance in the site’s content also disappeared. Before the decline, every photo series about fucking teenagers was accompanied by an intimate text about heartbreak, every LSD-soaked music video by an amusing travelogue, every bizarre triviality by a story about the small and big experiences of those who had chosen AMY&PINK as the medium to realize themselves digitally. After all, they could have published their texts in Vice, Huck, or the local newspaper.
But at some point, there were only empty shock articles left—attracting attention at any cost, when no one had been interested for a long time. I tried to save AMY&PINK. Really. God is not my witness, but my friend Hannah is—without whom I might have drowned in my own madness long ago. The poor thing had to listen to the drama every day, for years on end. You have to be able to make something out of this!
That can’t be all there is!
Maybe try again in another language?
I was caught in an endless cycle of brooding, doubting, and trying things out. If I were even a fraction as cool as I always pretended to be in my countless articles, I would have poured gasoline on AMY&PINK years ago, lit it on fire, and let it explode behind me in cinematic slow motion while I walked toward the camera with a crazy smile on my face. But I’m not cool. And I can’t just let go that easily.
After all, visitor numbers were still quite good, the content we had built up over the years was being clicked on diligently, and any SEO expert would have been happy with such metrics. But in the end, I spent far too much time trying to save AMY&PINK—time that I should have invested in more important things. Finding a real job, for example. Having children, planting trees, building houses, whatever.
Only to admit to myself at some point that AMY&PINK wasn’t going to work out. Not because the website itself wasn’t working anymore, but because I had outgrown the whole thing and it was finally time to say goodbye. AMY&PINK had been fun at one point, but now it wasn’t anymore. And no number of clicks in the world could change that feeling.
So one fine morning, I sat down in front of my laptop with a hot coffee, made a backup of the site, and then deleted it from the server. And I felt nothing. Nothing at all. I was simply done with the whole thing. AMY&PINK was dead. And I didn’t care. I finished my coffee, got up, and went for a walk.
Even today, people I don’t really know still ask me—by email, letter, and shouting through open windows—what actually happened to AMY&PINK. The portal of good cheer. The party ship of Berlin’s newcomers. The voice of a generation that never wanted to grow up, partied for three days at Berghain, and woke up one morning in the ruins of their own denial of reality.
The reflexive answer to the highly individual question of why AMY&PINK no longer exists is: Because I wasn’t enjoying it anymore.
And it took me a long time to admit to myself that this reason alone was enough to end it, even though logic said otherwise.
Instead, I now have my own little blog again, which I can fill with content that really interests me, and where it doesn’t matter if I’m the only one who reads it or likes it. Here, it doesn’t matter if I write about my current favorite Japanese band or publish a short story about a city at the end of the world. I can even rescue some articles from AMY&PINK and post them here if I think they would fit in well. Why not? I can now (once again) do what I want. Hurray.
I learned a lot from AMY&PINK and the people who had anything to do with it. But now it’s time to let the subject rest and start something new. The world out there is huge, and the possibilities for finding happiness are limitless. You just have to have the courage to let go, reach out to the unknown, and let it lead you to new adventures—before it’s too late.