AIM

Do you remember what stalking people was like before Facebook?  Mid-chat with friends this week, on a grown up Instant Messaging application, g-chat – the Google IM function – my friend asked me about my AIM screen name.  (Ha.)  We discussed how our ingenious and inspired pseudo internet identifiers from middle school, managed to follow us around right through our early 20’s.   I obviously had to try to log in to my AIM account to see if I still remembered a.) What the password is, b.) Who anyone on my buddy list is in real life.

                I was thats upsetting.  My best friend from middle school set up my account for me.  She was thats depressing.  Don’t we sound like a fun pair?  I think the inspiration came from our favorite phrases at the time.  Later she cheered up and became to thats enjoyable.  I stuck with the original and my screen name turned into my nickname in the dorms.  Apparently it has a better ring to it than Rachel?

            The best part of AIM was the away msg.  You remember, insight into the depths of your soul- bolded, highlighted, and italicized so all your friends could spend a few minutes trying to decipher what exactly you must be trying to convey to the world.  Certainly the best Away Msg to find was a copy and pasted conversation – with a screen name you didn’t recognize.  I truly enjoyed adding these unidentified people to my buddy list and studying their profiles to figure out who they were.  (Or was I the only AIM stalker?)

            Profiles were important.  Girl’s profiles pretty much had a standardized format.  Your college, graduation year, some song lyrics, a shout out to your friends – cryptically identified with code names or initials, and they your obligatory kissy emoticon to the significant other.  And if you were a lucky stalker – people would link in their webshots.  That was the real jackpot. 

But that’s why I love Facebook.  It completely eliminated the convoluted process of determining my friends activities by making everything easily available for me to see whenever I so choose.  Not that we've evolved much really - I mean aren't statuses the exact same thing as an away msg?  But I must say thank you to Facebook for consolidating my friends updates so I don't have to open individual windows to see where everyone is.

 

AIM was a great tool in college though.  (This was the early 2000’s after all – we weren’t all texting yet.)  Some conversations were just better written out.  Left room for interpretation.  Gave us time to consult with the roommate to devise the most appropriate response to a boyfriend’s or not-yet boyfriend’s statement.  But most importantly it introduced me to the world of electronic communication – my one true love.