AIM was the social media of our generation, unless you had a Myspace. Everyone had AIM and if you didn’t, you were not cool. However, now, people post statuses as a joke on Facebook that resemble what we posted on AIM back in the day. Here are the classic characteristics of AIM – the social media our generation looks back on fondly.

If your parents didn’t allow you to have one, you lied about it.

If your parents were anything like mine, aka extremely strict, you had a secret AIM. If they were home while you were on it, they had quick escape tactics. Addicting games probably was pulled up in a different window. You had to wait for the perfect time and moment to reveal the news that yes, in fact, you had an AIM.

Away messages.

For some reason, we all felt the need to tell everyone exactly what we were doing, when we were doing it, and who we were doing it with. Everyone would know how your day went. “2day is the worst day of my lyfe!!!! My life sucks!!” or “2day was amazing!!!! Love u all!!!” I wish I could shake my 12 year old self and tell her that no one gives a rat’s ass about the fact that I was “goin to the mallll” with “mah gurlzzzz.” I wish that I could tell myself that no, it does not matter that you will be away from your computer during dinner. There is legitimately no need to tell the world, “eatinggg dinnerrrr!!!!!! Brb!!!!” No. Need. No one cares.

The drama that ensues.

Due to the fact that we decided everyone needed to know our plan of action for everything we did, it was clear when you were excluded. “Did she seriously not invite me to that movie when literally everyone was going?” God forbid someone was AIM chatting the boy you like. All hell broke loose in your teenie-bopper mind over the passive aggressiveness that occurred in this form of social media.

The profile info.

Anything you wanted people to know about you was in your profile information. You wrote lyrics to your favorite songs. You told the world the most unsubstantial details of your life. “Love mah ppl so much, I have the best friends in the world, you know who you are <3.” Sometimes, people are bold and name drop their “people.” If you have a boyfriend, everyone knows it because of your profile. At the end of their profile will be an inevitable “Chad <3<3<3<3.” Chad? Your boyfriend? Yeah, you definitely only talked to him over AIM. You did not actually interact in real life.

The different Buddy Lists.

You created your buddy lists and named them. You organized all your AIM friends into the different buddy lists. You had your “besties” and the people that you didn’t really like. You had the family list if your siblings were on AIM.

The screennames.

No one can forget the most important factor of AIM – the screennames. Its rather unfathomable that we all thought those screennames were acceptable. Two of mine were runnergirl36 and xomeggsx14ox. Thinking about the different names makes me cringe. We all believed we were cute and cool when in reality, we are all extraordinarily cringe-worthy teenie-boppers.

It was our most sacred form of communication.

Whoever you talked to on AIM was a huge deal. Talking to a boy that you like via AIM? That is pretty serious. You talked to all your friends. Sometimes, you would talk to strangers, which was clearly a very bad idea but we all made it. We used it for anything and everything.