By Erin Cabrey
AOL Instant Messenger has had its “away” message up for a long time. Come Dec. 15, however, AIM will sign off for the final time. As the rise of smartphones and Facebook messenger has taken control of instant communication, the once-beloved AIM has been rendered obsolete and has finally decided to permanently shut down.
Wave goodbye to your buddy info, meticulously curated with perfect quotes typed in hot pink comic sans. Your cache of pre-set away messages ranging from “homework :/ bbl” to a full list of every activity you planned on doing for two days (“Shower. Sleep. School. Bball game. Movies. Sleepover with the girls!”) will cease to exist. It is time to finally delete that folder of icons downloaded from Iconator.com because, soon enough, you will have nothing to do with them. Soak in that sound of a creaky door closing and the beedleboop of a new message.
AOL launched AIM in 1997, first as part of the AOL desktop and later as a stand-alone download. At one time, AIM had the largest share of the instant messaging market, overtaking competitors like Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger. With the advent of messaging platforms like Gmail and Gchat in 2011, as well as Facebook messenger, AIM’s popularity quickly dwindled. When iMessage came along, AIM did not stand a chance.
Back in the day, when phone plans limited people to 250 texts per month and calling on the phone was just too much commitment, AIM thrived. So tweens and teens took to the dial-up internet and IMed their friends even when they did not have much at all to say.
Acronyms reigned supreme on this medium, and some of these continue to infiltrate chats today. From the more resilient “lol” and “idk” to the now defunct “g2g”, “brb, “ttyl”, the classic “wuts up” response “nmu” and, of course, the sneaky “pos” parent warning, AIM users were defined by their use of shorthand and the constant creation of new slang.
The rules and customs of AIM were different from modern messaging apps in a lot of ways. Screen names were almost never your actual name, but one expressing an interest (basketball, cats, “Hannah Montana”). You could add someone to your buddy list and they would never know that you could see their “away” message, buddy info and if they were online. Sounds were imperative, and you could even customize them so a bit of a song, perhaps “All You Wanted” by Michelle Branch, would play when you sent a message.
AIM was a medium of simpler times, revolutionary in that it allowed young people to experiment with their online identity and communicate with friends in a different way than ever before. Once you logged on, there were few parental constraints, allowing teens and tweens to be who they wanted to be and say what they wanted to say.
Let us have a moment of silence for all the screen names, littered with randomly placed x’s and o’s and collections of numbers, that will soon be laid to rest.
To mark the end of this mildly embarrassing era, The Ram staff recalls the formation of their very first online personas and the highlights of their time on AIM.
Elizabeth Smislova, Culture Editor
Screenname: libbystella322
Explanation: Stella is the name of my male cat and my best friend. March 22nd is my birthday (3/22) and one time my friends forgot my birthday so I put the date in my username so no one had an excuse anymore.
Erin Cabrey, Culture Editor
Screenname: erbear11xo
Explanation: I got the “er” from Erin, bear because it rhymed, and 11 is my birthday. I added the “xo” because that was what the cool kids were doing.
Favorite Memory: Reenacting the entire “IDK, my BFF Jill” Cingular (RIP) commercial with my friend on AIM.
Briana Scalia, Opinion Editor
Screenname: pinkoreo0210
Explanation: Pink was (is) my favorite color and I ate Oreos almost every morning with orange juice (not milk, don’t ask me why).
Favorite Memory: I used AIM to message my first crush in third grade, and my friends and I were all in the room arguing about each response.
Christopher Canadeo, Opinion Editor
Screenname: Snoz2890
Explanation: My nose was really big growing up and grew a lot faster than all of my other body parts. Because of this, people would call me “Chrissy Snozole” or “Big Nose Chris” so I created an AIM screen name that reflected the outside torment.
Margarita Artoglou, Managing Editor
Screenname: Greekgoddess318
Explanation: I was really into Greek mythology in sixth grade.
Favorite memory: One time I made my AIM story a full rundown of our class field trip to an amusement park. I really didn’t understand the medium.
Cat Swindal, Editorial Director
Screen name: Piano51
Explanation: I played piano and my birthday is May 1. I was a creative genius as a child.
Bailey Hosfelt, Culture Columnist
Screen name: hocksock101
Explanation: I played hockey and soccer at the time and like to boil my internet personality down to a combination of two things. The rhyme scheme and letter change from C to K was a suggestion from my mom The number feels arbitrary but maybe this was during the “Zoey 101” craze?
Favorite Memory: IM’ing back and forth with my sixth and seventh grade boyfriend (Screen name: Soupeschleg) for hours every night. We didn’t have cell phones yet and would resort to coordinating our meetups to bike in my neighborhood and subsequently kiss behind the bushes via AIM.
Liz Doty, Copy Chief
I didn’t have an AIM account because my parents were worried about sexual predators contacting me, so they never let me or my sisters have one. I feel like I missed out.
