Of All the Blogs in the World, He Walks Into Mine

A man born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Toronto and schooled at a Yeshiva and a Japanese-American man raised on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, were married in the rare books section of the Strand Bookstore in Greenwich Village before a crowd of 200 people, against a backdrop of an arch of gold balloons that were connected to each other like intertwined units of a necklace chain or the link emoji, in a ceremony led by a Buddhist that included an operatic performance by one friend, the reading of an original poem based on the tweets of Yoko Ono by another, and a lip-synced rendition of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” by a drag queen dressed in a white fringe jumper and a long veil.

The grooms met on the internet. But this isn’t a story about people who swiped right.

Adam J. Kurtz, 29, and Mitchell Kuga, 30, first connected Dec. 1, 2012, five years to the day before their wedding.

It was just before 5 p.m. and Mr. Kurtz, living in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, ordered a pizza. As one does, when one is 24 and living amid a generation of creative people whose every utterance and experience might be thought of as content, Mr. Kurtz filmed and posted to Tumblr a 10-minute video showing him awaiting the delivery.

Among those who liked the video was a stranger Mr. Kurtz had already admired from afar. It was a guy named Mitchell who didn’t reveal his last name on his Tumblr account, just his photographic eye for Brooklyn street scenes and, on occasion, his face. Mr. Kurtz had developed a bit of a social-media crush on him. “I would think, ‘He’s not even sharing his whole life, that is so smart and impressive,’” Mr. Kurtz said. (...)

When they met, they both were relatively new to New York. Mr. Kuga had moved to the city from Oahu in 2010, after having studied magazine journalism at Syracuse University, from which he graduated in 2009. He is a freelance journalist who has written for Next Magazine and for Gothamist, including an article about Spam (the food product, not the digital menace).

Mr. Kurtz graduated from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2009 and moved to New York in 2012 to work as a graphic artist. He was always creative and enjoyed making crafts with bits and bobs of paper he had saved, ticket stubs and back-of-the-envelope doodles.

He began to build a large social media following, particularly on Instagram, of those who enjoyed his wry humor in celebrating paper culture through digital media, as well as the witty items he began to sell online (like little heart-shaped Valentine’s Day candies that say, “RT 4 YES, FAV 4 NO” AND “REBLOG ME”).

by Katherine Rosman, NY Times |  Read more:
Image: Rebecca Smeyne

[ed. Gay, straight, sideways... this just hurts my brain.]