AIM love, IRL
February 12, 2016 2:24 PM Subscribe
"I changed the quotes in my AOL Instant Messenger profile almost daily, and fretted over the right combinations of font and color to make my IM voice look as bright and edgy as I wanted to be in real life. I started conversations with acquaintances who made me feel shy in person. I imagined I had inner beauty and wit, and that in chatrooms and AIM was where I could shine until that outer beauty showed up. And slowly, the IRL me started to become more like the me I allowed myself to be online... Matt and I built our relationship over AIM. We used AIM because it was our most practical option; like many teenagers in the year 2001, we didn't have cell phones. We did have computers in our respective bedrooms, though, and parents who weren't expecting phone calls after dinner hours."
Away: Will you marry me? [idle 56 min]
posted by oceanjesse at 2:33 PM on February 12, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by oceanjesse at 2:33 PM on February 12, 2016 [5 favorites]
Relevant: People Explain Their Childhood AIM Names (Buzzfeed Video)
Now I will RTFA. And I will never reveal my childhood AIM name.
posted by sunset in snow country at 2:35 PM on February 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
Now I will RTFA. And I will never reveal my childhood AIM name.
posted by sunset in snow country at 2:35 PM on February 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
I was an early adopter of AOL, with a mother working in media and a father in one of those software jobs dads always have where you don't know quite what they do.
ugh, is my daughter going to write this article with snapchat instead of AIM in 15 years?
posted by GuyZero at 2:38 PM on February 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
ugh, is my daughter going to write this article with snapchat instead of AIM in 15 years?
posted by GuyZero at 2:38 PM on February 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
Wow...that essay hit's a lot of points for me. My wife and I randomly "met" on AIM back in like 2000 when I was in college in CT and she was living down in FL. She just randomly IM'ed me one day because my profile had I was studying Forensic Science in it and she thought that was cool....we chatted on and off on-line for a few years with our first IRL phone call to each other being on September 11. Phone calls turned into visits north and south, her moving up north and in with me when she graduated college, and eventually to marriage in 2009.
We still sort of joke to this day that we really have AOL IM to thank.
posted by Captain_Science at 2:47 PM on February 12, 2016 [4 favorites]
We still sort of joke to this day that we really have AOL IM to thank.
posted by Captain_Science at 2:47 PM on February 12, 2016 [4 favorites]
I was an early adopter of AOL, with a mother working in media and a father in one of those software jobs dads always have where you don't know quite what they do.
ugh, is my daughter going to write this article with snapchat instead of AIM in 15 years?
posted by GuyZero at 5:38 PM on February 12 [+] [!]
Yes. But it will be a series of selfies with bold text underneath.
posted by edbles at 2:48 PM on February 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
ugh, is my daughter going to write this article with snapchat instead of AIM in 15 years?
posted by GuyZero at 5:38 PM on February 12 [+] [!]
Yes. But it will be a series of selfies with bold text underneath.
posted by edbles at 2:48 PM on February 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
This is as good a place as any to share Emily is Away.
posted by tobascodagama at 2:56 PM on February 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by tobascodagama at 2:56 PM on February 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
I met my husband IRL. Typing that makes me feel so old. But on our second go-round, years later, we kept in touch via email, and I am so glad I printed out our correspondence; it's funny to think about our kids reading mama and daddy's electronic love letters.
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:16 PM on February 12, 2016
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:16 PM on February 12, 2016
I too spent my formative years learning how to be a human almost entirely via IM. AIM and MSN Messenger. That's why now that "chat at work" is becoming a thing it puzzles me when people who are about my age or a little older don't see IMing and monitoring chats out of the corner of your eye as you do 10 other things as something one does as naturally as eating and breathing. I've been doing this my entire life, hasn't everyone?
posted by bleep at 3:22 PM on February 12, 2016 [12 favorites]
posted by bleep at 3:22 PM on February 12, 2016 [12 favorites]
aww, I miss AIM and my first experiences with email & chatting online. I'm still bummed that I lost my first-ever email account (hotmail!) when I let it go dormant too long and the hotmail gods deleted it. I want to read those old emails!
posted by aka burlap at 3:33 PM on February 12, 2016
posted by aka burlap at 3:33 PM on February 12, 2016
Awww! This was sweet.
My husband and I met and created our relationship over the interwarbs. It's. . .interesting, I guess, how much of that kind of internet communication we use as one of the tools to continuously maintain our relationship. It's been 10+ years and even if we saw each other for a few hours before one/both of us separated for work, I still look forward to that first email, chat, or text about 20 minutes in saying obnoxiously cute/sexy/lovey things to each other. And even if I still have to work 4-5 hours (I work from home) I know my day is about to get so much better when I see him update chat that he's on his way home. I was pretty much myself from the beginning through - when we started IMing my handle was either FartTart3000 or FartoftheTiger, I can't remember which.
Also, chat is my #1 tool at work and with colleagues. I've pretty much written entire science pubs over chat, but I notice it's kind of a generational thing, perhaps? Although it's been really cool to see all the new options the last few years. (And by "last few years": a decade but it feels like 2-3. Cuz 2007 was only a few years ago.)
posted by barchan at 3:34 PM on February 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
My husband and I met and created our relationship over the interwarbs. It's. . .interesting, I guess, how much of that kind of internet communication we use as one of the tools to continuously maintain our relationship. It's been 10+ years and even if we saw each other for a few hours before one/both of us separated for work, I still look forward to that first email, chat, or text about 20 minutes in saying obnoxiously cute/sexy/lovey things to each other. And even if I still have to work 4-5 hours (I work from home) I know my day is about to get so much better when I see him update chat that he's on his way home. I was pretty much myself from the beginning through - when we started IMing my handle was either FartTart3000 or FartoftheTiger, I can't remember which.
Also, chat is my #1 tool at work and with colleagues. I've pretty much written entire science pubs over chat, but I notice it's kind of a generational thing, perhaps? Although it's been really cool to see all the new options the last few years. (And by "last few years": a decade but it feels like 2-3. Cuz 2007 was only a few years ago.)
posted by barchan at 3:34 PM on February 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
I loved using IM/AIM during conference calls when those of us on the same team were scattered around the country. It enabled us to strategize in real time without the other party/ies being the wiser. We nicknamed one guy "Phil," because he was so great at filling the air with words while we IM'd each other responses. Example:
Client: How much will that cost?
Phil: Well, we're going to have to consider [blah blah blah blah blah]...
Simultaneous IM: $15K? Too high? I say $20K. Client's a jerk. Plus XMas. OK? OK, but if he balks, drop to $18. OK.
Phil: So, without having thought about it in detail, I'm going to say $20K.
posted by carmicha at 3:35 PM on February 12, 2016 [9 favorites]
Client: How much will that cost?
Phil: Well, we're going to have to consider [blah blah blah blah blah]...
Simultaneous IM: $15K? Too high? I say $20K. Client's a jerk. Plus XMas. OK? OK, but if he balks, drop to $18. OK.
Phil: So, without having thought about it in detail, I'm going to say $20K.
posted by carmicha at 3:35 PM on February 12, 2016 [9 favorites]
Good old AIM! My best friend using AOL was the main driver for my convincing my parents to shift from CompuServe to AOL when I was in middle school, so circa 1997. I wanted to be able to talk to her on IM. And also not have it take two days for emails to be sent between the two services. And also I ran up a $60 bill on CompuServe one month and AOL was still $20 for unlimited use.
We still spent hours on the phone together, but this was easier for awkward conversations, having in the background while doing homework, and generally just being a way to chat while we explored online. We are both crazy fast typists now because of all that time spent chatting. We spent a month trying to type words phonetically using as few characters as possible. We discovered the character map and that kept us entertained for a while. We experimented with our need for punctuation. We learned all the abbreviations. We carried out early teen flirtations with guys we knew and copied and pasted their words for analysis between us.
Away messages and profiles could be read into with gusto. Font choice was heavily judged. (I'm still sort of irked by her heavy preference for Papyrus toward the end of our original AIM days) And when they came out with the "[X] is typing..." indicator? Even more chance to read into it!
Yeah. Technology inhibits our ability to communicate with each other.
Count me in as someone who considers having some kind of IM client open at all times a basic courtesy to friends and coworkers. I currently enjoy using Slack as basically an advanced IM client for a very small number of people (versus a chat room). Gtalk did me well for a number of years too. (Still does for a lot of friends) Does this all make me old? Am I old now?
posted by olinerd at 3:36 PM on February 12, 2016 [6 favorites]
We still spent hours on the phone together, but this was easier for awkward conversations, having in the background while doing homework, and generally just being a way to chat while we explored online. We are both crazy fast typists now because of all that time spent chatting. We spent a month trying to type words phonetically using as few characters as possible. We discovered the character map and that kept us entertained for a while. We experimented with our need for punctuation. We learned all the abbreviations
Away messages and profiles could be read into with gusto. Font choice was heavily judged. (I'm still sort of irked by her heavy preference for Papyrus toward the end of our original AIM days) And when they came out with the "[X] is typing..." indicator? Even more chance to read into it!
Yeah. Technology inhibits our ability to communicate with each other.
Count me in as someone who considers having some kind of IM client open at all times a basic courtesy to friends and coworkers. I currently enjoy using Slack as basically an advanced IM client for a very small number of people (versus a chat room). Gtalk did me well for a number of years too. (Still does for a lot of friends) Does this all make me old? Am I old now?
posted by olinerd at 3:36 PM on February 12, 2016 [6 favorites]
I'm a SAS programmer, and my team still uses AIM almost exclusively to communicate.
We like to joke that we only use tools that are at least two decades old.
posted by koeselitz at 3:52 PM on February 12, 2016 [8 favorites]
We like to joke that we only use tools that are at least two decades old.
posted by koeselitz at 3:52 PM on February 12, 2016 [8 favorites]
I'm a year older than this woman and AIM was the primary medium of my social interaction with my peers from...I'd say 1997 through 2004. Definitely my first couple of relationships were AIM-centric relationships. Like the article author, I lived in a city where even though we were in the same city technically, if you didn't drive yet you may as well live on another planet. In fact our city was so big that we were in two different phone area codes, which meant that if we stayed on the phone for hours it would show up on the phone bill, no bueno. In 2001-2002 a lot of the action moved over to LiveJournal.
aka burlap, I also lost some priceless correspondence when Hotmail killed one of my email accounts for inactivity. Especially annoying because they gave you so little free storage that you were constantly curating your archive to make sure only the true gems were still kicking around. It was a lot of work keeping my saved emails folder small enough that Hotmail wouldn't randomly start deleting things and to have them just delete eeeeverything one day was a blow.
posted by town of cats at 4:11 PM on February 12, 2016 [4 favorites]
aka burlap, I also lost some priceless correspondence when Hotmail killed one of my email accounts for inactivity. Especially annoying because they gave you so little free storage that you were constantly curating your archive to make sure only the true gems were still kicking around. It was a lot of work keeping my saved emails folder small enough that Hotmail wouldn't randomly start deleting things and to have them just delete eeeeverything one day was a blow.
posted by town of cats at 4:11 PM on February 12, 2016 [4 favorites]
There was a TV commercial sometime in the late 90s, where two teenagers come back to their homes after a date, and immediately run to their computers after a date, to keep the conversation going.
The girl sends the boy a photo of her smiling face. The boy Photoshops the face onto the image of an angel and sends it back to her.
It's cute!
Until you go, heyyyy, the teenagers are sending Photoshopped pictures of themselves back and forth and oh my gawd this is going to turn into a series of horrible pedo crimes in about 90 seconds...
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 4:28 PM on February 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
The girl sends the boy a photo of her smiling face. The boy Photoshops the face onto the image of an angel and sends it back to her.
It's cute!
Until you go, heyyyy, the teenagers are sending Photoshopped pictures of themselves back and forth and oh my gawd this is going to turn into a series of horrible pedo crimes in about 90 seconds...
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 4:28 PM on February 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
I was an early adopter of AOL,
Not in 2001, or anywhere close. But history seems different to everyone.
Coincidently, I just tried Messages and Adium last night and tried to figure out my accounts. I was just wondering if anyone uses IM’s anymore, because I never did, it just never fit into my life. The only time I have is to keep in touch with my wife when I’m out of town, so I guess it is a couples thing.
posted by bongo_x at 5:27 PM on February 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
Not in 2001, or anywhere close. But history seems different to everyone.
Coincidently, I just tried Messages and Adium last night and tried to figure out my accounts. I was just wondering if anyone uses IM’s anymore, because I never did, it just never fit into my life. The only time I have is to keep in touch with my wife when I’m out of town, so I guess it is a couples thing.
posted by bongo_x at 5:27 PM on February 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
I have a similar story only I'm apparently a lot older than this author because mine took place over the VMS Phone Utility (aka PHONE) on a Brown University vax machine. I loved that format because you could both be "speaking" at once. This was also true on unix 'talk'. Why did we have to lose that simultaneity and move to interspersed blobs of typing? I truly believe I wouldn't be in the (decades-long) relationship I'm in now if it weren't for PHONE.
posted by tractorfeed at 5:53 PM on February 12, 2016
posted by tractorfeed at 5:53 PM on February 12, 2016
Nostalgic for that AIM sound? Treat yourself. (Top left corner; click to play, click again to stop.) Thank you, Museum of Endangered Sounds!
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:13 PM on February 12, 2016 [8 favorites]
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:13 PM on February 12, 2016 [8 favorites]
I currently enjoy using Slack as basically an advanced IM client for a very small number of people
I use slack all time time anymore for my employment. We've referred to it as "IRC Enterprise." It's one of those things that's really great but none of us can explain exactly why, and now it's critically important that all the things can talk to slack and programmatically add reactions or emoji to the chat as needed.
posted by MysticMCJ at 6:37 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
I use slack all time time anymore for my employment. We've referred to it as "IRC Enterprise." It's one of those things that's really great but none of us can explain exactly why, and now it's critically important that all the things can talk to slack and programmatically add reactions or emoji to the chat as needed.
posted by MysticMCJ at 6:37 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
Someone in my lab has that as their text notification, MonkeyToes, and it's the most disorienting thing!
posted by ChuraChura at 6:38 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by ChuraChura at 6:38 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
AIM was for when my parents told me about the size of the long distance phone bill I was running up. Remember when calling different area codes cost more than calling within your area code? I do because we ran up hundred dollar bills some months.
AIM also gave me the capability to save conversations. I would like to say that this was a good thing. And it was sometimes. But others, well, when someone can quote your words back at you exactly and you're both dumb teenagers, the fights feel epic.
posted by Hactar at 7:01 PM on February 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
AIM also gave me the capability to save conversations. I would like to say that this was a good thing. And it was sometimes. But others, well, when someone can quote your words back at you exactly and you're both dumb teenagers, the fights feel epic.
posted by Hactar at 7:01 PM on February 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
My wife and I use Adium all day, every day to communicate while at work. We use our Yahoo accounts but not the craptastic, hasn't-been-updated-updated-in-ten-years Yahoo client. It's really no different than texting, but much more convenient.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:55 PM on February 12, 2016
posted by Thorzdad at 8:55 PM on February 12, 2016
If you want to relive all this stuff, try playing the game Emily Is Away. It's an entire game that's played through an AIM chat window.
posted by miyabo at 9:29 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by miyabo at 9:29 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
Ah AIM. All my relationships between about 2000 and 2007 made heavy use of AIM and email. So much romance in pure words! It was like the realization of an idea I'd had early in one courtship at age 16, sitting on the quad with a guy I was just getting to know, "talking" on paper, because even then I knew I was at my best in text.
AIM and then Gchat/Hangouts were how I kept in touch with most of my friends for years, too, until everyone started just using Facebook chat. Now I have two friends I keep in touch with via Hangouts every day, wherever they are across the country, and a couple others who sometimes use it. I normally organize any friend get-togethers via some form of chat.
A year and a few months ago, I took a job where the workplace is Slack, connecting a team distributed across the country (and occasionally the world). For me, after years of pouring my thoughts into chat, typing is as natural as talking, and it's how I've talked to my friends more or less since I was 16. I think this—plus the joy of getting to work alongside one of the friends with whom I kept in touch via AIM and Gchat for years—is a large part of why I feel so at ease and at my best in this work environment. I feel like I can finally be much more myself at work than ever, and I'm accepted and even celebrated for it. Getting back to a tech environment with geeks like myself helps—especially when so many of us had similar formative experiences with chat. It's a delight.
This also makes me think of Jane and the ansible in the Ender's series, or Samantha in Her. Text is so romantic!
posted by limeonaire at 9:33 PM on February 12, 2016
AIM and then Gchat/Hangouts were how I kept in touch with most of my friends for years, too, until everyone started just using Facebook chat. Now I have two friends I keep in touch with via Hangouts every day, wherever they are across the country, and a couple others who sometimes use it. I normally organize any friend get-togethers via some form of chat.
A year and a few months ago, I took a job where the workplace is Slack, connecting a team distributed across the country (and occasionally the world). For me, after years of pouring my thoughts into chat, typing is as natural as talking, and it's how I've talked to my friends more or less since I was 16. I think this—plus the joy of getting to work alongside one of the friends with whom I kept in touch via AIM and Gchat for years—is a large part of why I feel so at ease and at my best in this work environment. I feel like I can finally be much more myself at work than ever, and I'm accepted and even celebrated for it. Getting back to a tech environment with geeks like myself helps—especially when so many of us had similar formative experiences with chat. It's a delight.
This also makes me think of Jane and the ansible in the Ender's series, or Samantha in Her. Text is so romantic!
posted by limeonaire at 9:33 PM on February 12, 2016
Everyone is talking like AIM is *gone*. I still use it for some things, for a couple of my friends it's still my primary method of communication. We use it for roleplay gaming because it logs everything automatically and you get an absolutely massive text box.
Skype's... OK as a substitute, but AIM is the only one I know where it will send all the logs to your own computer.
posted by HypotheticalWoman at 9:38 PM on February 12, 2016
Skype's... OK as a substitute, but AIM is the only one I know where it will send all the logs to your own computer.
posted by HypotheticalWoman at 9:38 PM on February 12, 2016
I still keep AIM on with IM+ Pro, but out of dozens of screennames that used to appear in my buddy list, I'm down to exactly four friends online as of this writing. The only accounts that ever contact me on there are spambots. And my Jabber workaround for connecting to Facebook chat without Messenger stopped working not long ago, so I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to keep running it... I used to love being able to keep multiple chat services connected via Adium, occasionally Trillium, or more recently apps like IM+. But Facebook chat seems to be literally a killer app. I miss screennames populating the list instead of the oppressiveness of real names of people I no longer speak to...
posted by limeonaire at 9:51 PM on February 12, 2016
posted by limeonaire at 9:51 PM on February 12, 2016
« Older Cute and cuddly dolphins are secretly murderers | Your Friday touch of Zen Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by aniola at 2:29 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]