![]() ![]() Oh, and it was the place I created my first and only online identity: StarFire2258. With AIM, we didn't have to wait until homeroom the next day to talk Backstreet Boys, Korn, Limp Bizkit or Juvenile and how high their videos ranked on "TRL." (It was an interesting time in pop music.) We could just scoot on over to our computers and have a private conversation without parents or siblings meddling close by, even if you were like me and had a time limit on how long you could keep the phone line tied up. (She usually gave me an hour.) Then, I'd hop on my desktop computer and discuss the music videos that the daily countdown show featured. Screen name: goodgrrl2003, because goodgirl2003 was taken.Īfter "TRL" aired each day, I'd double-check with my mom to make sure I could use our one phone line to get on the internet. Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking either. Fortunately a friend finally told me it meant "laughing out loud" and proceeded to laugh out loud at what I thought it was. Like I thought it meant "that is correct!" or something. I kept seeing it come up in conversations in chat rooms and - not knowing what it meant - I thought it was a sort of symbol for a football referee holding up his arms to signal a touchdown. My first experience of AIM is pretty embarrassing because it's where I learned one of the oldest Internet acronyms: lol. Screen name: Not telling because I still use it for other things You could hint at the deeply important drama of your life in your buddy profile with song lyrics or by referring to people and events without giving details - a precursor to vaguebooking and subtweeting.Īnd while there were other options for presenting an online identity (LiveJournal, GeoCities websites and BBS chat boards, to name a few), this was the most important tool for interacting with your IRL friends online.Īnd all those horrible times when you couldn't download the AIM software onto your computer and desperately needed to talk to your friends? Thank God for AIM Express!! Jason Parker You could show off who your close friends were by quoting your own conversations in your away message. It was amazing how expressive these few tools could be. One of my screen names had a bouncing image of Pom Pom from Homestar Runner attached to it.) (You could use an animated buddy icon and they were wonderfully stupid. No selfies, no hashtags, and certainly no videos with filters that could automatically detect your face. ![]() Unlike the platforms that followed, you shaped your AIM identity relying only on your choice of screen name, a clever away message, and a buddy profile that could be formatted just with different font types and background colors. ![]()
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