One of our favorite blogs here at It Goes to 11 is Fuck Yeah, T-Shirts, which approaches the humble tee less as a commodity and more as an artifact rife with symbolic meaning (as much for whatever design it bears as for the individual wearing it). Employing a simple formula — pictures supported by the occasional bit of copy — and a prolific posting schedule, it stands apart from your average shirt feed. In any case, an element of mutual respect for the other’s work begat a simple dialogue, which in turn led to a interview with the column’s author below. Enjoy!
It Goes to 11: Can you tell us about yourself (name, age, location, etc.) and your various online endeavors?
Sean Collins: My name’s Sean T. Collins, and I’m a 32-year-old Long Island native. I live in Levittown with my wife and two cats and I work in NYC. I’ve been writing about pop culture professionally since 2001 and on my blog, Attentiondeficitdisorderly, since 2003. My main focus includes comics, which I currently cover for Maxim magazine, Marvel.com, and the Robot 6 blog at ComicBookResources.com as well as on my own blog, but I also write quite a bit about music, movies, genre fiction, horror, and basically whatever else strikes my fancy, which is the cool thing about the Internet as far as I can see. Fuck Yeah, T-Shirts–along with Bowie Loves Beyoncé, my other Tumblr–falls under the “whatever else strikes my fancy” category.

IG211: What was the spark behind Fuck Yeah, T-Shirts, and how long have you been at it?
SC: Thinking about it now, the spark behind FYTS was very similar to the way I started self-identifying as a person who’s “into” t-shirts to begin with. As a teenager during the early-’90s “alternative” boom, t-shirts were such a huge part of that culture, and I’d always just instinctively treated them as a vessel for self-expression. In much the same way that I never outgrew loud music and obsessive movie-watching and comics, I never outgrew wearing t-shirts either. There came a point while I was working for Wizard Magazine and freelancing for The Comics Journal and Stuff magazine where I was accruing more and more shirts–sort of shifting away from band t-shirts, because I wasn’t going to very many shows anymore, and into shirts based on superheroes, alternative comics, and ’80s genre flicks–and suddenly a lightbulb went off over my head. “Hey–I’m a t-shirt person!” So I started treating my love of t-shirts the same way I treat my love of comics and music: They’re things I collect and enjoy.
That’s pretty much how FYTS was born. I’d long been posting cool shirts i’d see here and there on Attentiondeficitdisorderly, along with graphic novel reviews and comic art and links to stories about Clive Barker and all the other stuff I posted. Then suddenly it hit me: “Hey–start a t-shirt blog!” The Tumblr interface makes blogging photos so easy that it was almost tougher NOT to start FYTS!
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