This was our way of communication when we were growing up. We weren't old enough or fortunate enough to have cell phones to text our friends all night after seeing them all day at school.
That's right, I'm talking about AIM. (aka AOL Instant Messenger). I'm sure I don't speak for myself when I say I spent hours--long hours--sitting on the computer eating my after school snack waiting for my BFF to log on so we could chat for the rest of the night. Those of you who did this too will remember the following things that came along with being an AIM addict.
Screen names
It was always a struggle choosing the perfect screen name that represented who you really were deep down as a person. Example: CheerBaby56, Princess1219, ItalianGurlx33, XoAnnaBananaXo, BooBoo01101... The worst part was finally coming up with the perfect combination of Xs and Os and random 3s that had no significance what so ever, only to be disappointed when you find out someone already claimed that name and you had to start all over.
Buddy Lists
There is no way that you could chat with all your friends without categorizing them into specific groups with worthy titles such as:
~*BFF*~
<3Boyfriend<3
R0B0TS
FAM[ily]
FRiENDS(:
ME!!
And when your BFF did something that was not best friend material they got automatically got demoted into a basic "Friends" category.
Away Messages
Whether you walked away for 2 minutes or a few hours you had to post an away message telling everyone what you were doing.
shopping with momma <3 be back later.
shower, bed for the night, then school.
Away messages: the original Sub tweet.
Profiles
The best part was editing your profile. It usually had some organization of your best friend's initials, your boyfriend for that week and a quote or song lyric that totally described your life as a pre-teen.
Icons
Icons were fun too. You could spend hours looking for the perfect icon that suits your mood, the season, or something totally irrelevant. Either way they really said a lot about you.
Robots
Remember those robots that you could IM and they would always respond? SmarterChild, AustinPowers, StudyBuddy, Spleak. They were designed to respond to anything you asked and when no one else was online it was fun to say reckless things to them. They were always super reliable when you were lonely
Acronyms
Our generation is constantly being bashed for our inability to form sentences with proper capitalization and punctuation. The best part is they think that this inability comes from texting. Boy, are they wrong. It comes from AIM. BRB. TTYL. LYLAS. BBL. ILY. LOL. G2G. AIM is where these clever, short versions of our favorite sayings originated.
I hope reading this triggers some memories from your days spent on AIM. I know after thinking back about each of these I feel incredibly embarrassed about some of the things that I posted when I was younger. I'm sure ten years from now, as technology grows, we will look back our social media and question our sense of judgment when it comes to what we post.
