The colorbar was created by LiveJournal user "shared_boxers" (also known as Alan Bodenobleman) in February 2004 to support the controversial gay marriage movement that was being widely discussed at the time. In a post timestamped 01:45 am February 12th, he posted a simple HTML table rendering of the rainbow flag under the heading "Show Your Support", and requested that others duplicate it in their own weblogs. (However, he initially used seven colors rather than the six below.)

The simple image spread throughout LiveJournal extremely quickly, and within days, thousands of replies were posted to the first journal entry. While the original meme met with great success, it also spawned a new art form of its very own. Some users made variations with different colors: black and blue, for example, to represent solidarity with victims of bullies. Before long, pictures were being inserted into the colorbar. The original political intent lessened, and the bars shifted to become a style of fan art. The message "Marriage is love" saw a wide number of (often humorous) variants emerge, though they usually continued to include the fragment "is love" in some way. This text is commonly made into a link that points back to the colorbar's creator.

One year later, colorbars are common across LiveJournal and other similar websites, and new ones continue to be created frequently. There are even a number of discussion communities devoted to the creation and distribution of such images. One website hosts an "isLove Generator" that will semi-randomly create simple HTML colorbars for users.

Examples

External links

• shared_boxers: Show Your Support – The original post
• ratkrycek: A meme I felt I should be passing on. – Black and blue colorbar example
• colorbar_love – Community devoted to colorbars
• isLove Generator