My ball-jointed doll webring, and some links I've enjoyed recently
If you've been active in the western doll community lately, you've probably heard the news that Den of Angels, the oldest ball-jointed doll forum, will likely be closing in August. I haven't been very active there for a while, but it was a hugely formative part of my time in this hobby. I joined when it was still a Yahoo! Group over 20 years ago, and spent a lot of time on it in the early years. I still use the Marketplace and love the crafting sub-forum.
If Den of Angels closes, as seems likely, a lot of information will be lost, and one of the non-social-media doll communities will close. I've seen the internet fundamentally change in my lifetime, and this feels like another blow. Social media, as a doll community (or as any community) seems more fragile than ever, where we just have to adapt to whatever new hellish way big tech companies would like to make their profit this week. It's also designed to be highly addictive and so not always a very enjoyable experience, even when you just use it to try and look at pictures of pretty dolls. There are ball-jointed doll Discords, which I'm a member of and which are useful, but it's a very different pace - and the larger Discord groups are too big for me to meaningfully keep up with.
With all this, it makes me think about the part of the internet I remember and still love: quirky personal sites made by real people who just want to share things they find interesting. Inspired by this love, earlier this year I made a webring for ball-jointed doll websites: ball-jointed.club. (I actually had the idea in 2022 and started building it then, but it took me a while...)
The idea is to collect personal doll sites (not social media profiles) and have a way for people to find new doll hobbyists to follow and enjoy.
There are already quite a few members, and if you read this blog then I encourage you to check them out. When I started this hobby I remember the joy of discovering new doll sites I'd never seen before (even more exciting when they were in Japanese and I couldn't understand anything, because there were no translation tools back then...). I hope that if you browse the sites in the webring you'll feel a little bit of that joy too.
And if you have your own doll website or are thinking of making one, then please consider joining the webring. I only store the URL and name of your site, and there's no analytics, cookies, or anything invasive on the page. You can always get in touch with me via the contact form to get your site removed, changed, to to ask any questions.
With that, I wanted to share a few blog posts I enjoyed recently:
Pasticcina shared a box opening of her MaskcatDoll Dahlia. Maskcat make the most beautiful dolls (and boxes!) so this was a treat to read.
Kokage owns a gorgeous Volks F-101 called Tsukasa, and wrote a post about how to put together coordinating outfits, full of the most stunning photos, plus a dash of colour theory. I learned a lot here!
Vega wrote about an exciting new (rare!) doll purchase, and how that came to be. I really enjoy Vega's style of writing and thought process, also around buying (or not buying) dolls. I hope that your Shinydoll is a good fit when they arrive, Vega!
In conclusion: personal doll sites and blogs are great. Taking the time to make or write something yourself is great. Stepping further away from social media also feels pretty great, to me. The internet I knew is irrevocably changed, but that doesn't mean all of it is bad. Blogs aren't dead, and making your own personal site is easier than ever. So if you've been on the fence, maybe 2026 is the year to give it a try?