Stay out of the "created by AOL members" section.

May 13, 2015 6:26 AM

Youtuber Lazy Game Reviews runs AOL 4 on Windows 8.1 in May of 2015 to see what still works, what's broken, and who's still hanging around the AOL 4 chat rooms.
posted by Pope Guilty (39 comments total)

Pfft, 4.0? Sure, maybe if you had 56 kilobits a seconds to download the new version. The rest of us were happy with our font-less 3.1, which came on a CD in the mail 45 times a year.
posted by Mayor West at 7:00 AM on May 13, 2015 [10 favorites]

Before that it came on floppy discs that you could wipe and use as blank floppy disks! Because who doesn't need floppy discs!
posted by Ragged Richard at 7:13 AM on May 13, 2015 [16 favorites]

i think i still have a 1.0 or 1.1 floppy at my parent's house that I used for highschool.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 7:22 AM on May 13, 2015

I loved that there are still AIM spam bots running/messaging you. When society collapses and we are thrown back to the middle ages there will still be a computer in some bunker run on solar power trying to help find sexy singles in your area.
posted by Captain_Science at 7:23 AM on May 13, 2015 [20 favorites]

Ragged Richard: "Before that it came on floppy discs that you could wipe and use as blank floppy disks! Because who doesn't need floppy discs!"

I handed in most of my homework for CS classes on re-purposed AOL floppy disks.
posted by octothorpe at 7:27 AM on May 13, 2015 [4 favorites]

For a while they sent out CDs in these flat tin cases, which made the perfect cases to organize all kinds of pencils and hard pastels and such when I was in art school. They didn't stay closed well so you would make a gaffer tape hinge on one side and a little gaffer tape flap for a closure on the opposite side, but they stacked awesomely in small bags and were the perfect size.
posted by jason_steakums at 7:33 AM on May 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

I was never on AOL (Compuserve as a kid, and then just regular local ISP access after that), but I still have fond memories of AIM. That was the first social network sort of stuff I had access to that incorporated my real-life friend network instead of a bunch of strangers out on the Internet. Stuff like buddy info and icons were actually really neat features, in retrospect. They gave you a lot of options to customize your text, and the UI was fairly well done given the early nature of it.

Watching the video, it seems like there's more to the AOL desktop then I ever imagined. AOL was always shorthand for teenage Internet person "regular normie idiot on the 'net" condescension, but apparently there was a decent amount of effort put into making content for users...
posted by codacorolla at 7:36 AM on May 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

Pfft, 4.0? Sure, maybe if you had 56 kilobits a seconds to download the new version. The rest of us were happy with our font-less 3.1, which came on a CD in the mail 45 times a year.

Woah, look out for Mr. Moneybags with his mountain of compact discs! Back in my day we input the binary by hand directly on the metal, and we were happy to have it! I had to save up a month's wages from the arsenic mines to just buy a magnetized needle.
posted by leotrotsky at 8:10 AM on May 13, 2015 [9 favorites]

It's interesting how much still works since it's running on AOL servers almost exclusively. They must have had meetings where people asked if they really had to move that code and data over to the new software and hardware or could they just dump it already. This makes me think that enough people are still using some of this (or were recently) and they decided it had to stay up. Crazy, but not shocking knowing some of the software I see friends and family use and even use myself. If there is not a better way and that thing from 1992 still runs, then why change?

I may need to try this just to see if I can find the little music edits and clips I uploaded in the early 90's. I'm quite sure I don't have them anymore.

I really like the delivery in the video. I have to check out some of his other ones now.

"Maybe you'll make a new cigarette wielding lady friend."
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 8:28 AM on May 13, 2015

In the late 90s it really felt like Fairfax County would be the next Silicon Valley. It was home to companies tha dominated a lot of early territory AOL (consumer ISP), UUNET (backbone), Cybercash (payment), along with some innovative mobile companies like Nextel. 15 years later every one of these leaders is gone.
My theory is that the collapse of the first dot com bubble, followed by huge spending on government contracting following 9-11 resulted in most DC metro tech startups focusing on chasing the government money, instead of consumer innovations. This allowed the Bay Area to reassert itself as the dominant technology hub.
posted by humanfont at 8:44 AM on May 13, 2015 [6 favorites]

I will never forget receiving an AOL CD (I forget the version, but this was in 1996 or so) attached to a pair of gym shorts I bought.

Now that I think about it, that may have been the inception of the Netflix recommendation engine.
posted by Dark Messiah at 8:44 AM on May 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

That was pretty neat. The one thing I really wanted him to try was visit a modern website via the web browser in AOL.
posted by roll truck roll at 8:50 AM on May 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

I will say this: it's because of AOL that I know what happens when you put a CD in a microwave.
posted by Fizz at 9:02 AM on May 13, 2015 [5 favorites]

Fizz: "I will say this: it's because of AOL that I know what happens when you put a CD in a microwave."

And? What happens?
posted by AugustWest at 9:06 AM on May 13, 2015

In addition to the microwave trick, I used them as drink coasters for years.
posted by double block and bleed at 9:08 AM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Every time you microwave an AOL CD it extends their dominion one more hour

I have to say I heard a pretty brain dead man in the street interview session on NPR this morning, where the interviewer was looking for people who were still "AOL Subscribers" and I think she concluded that someone who "still had an AOL email account" was an "AOL Subscriber"

Is that really the case? I had an AIM account and probably an AOL email address of some kind without ever having given them money.
posted by RustyBrooks at 9:09 AM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Fizz: "I will say this: it's because of AOL that I know what happens when you put a CD in a microwave."

And? What happens?"

This happens
posted by double block and bleed at 9:10 AM on May 13, 2015 [4 favorites]

I was pretty obsessed with AIM back in the day. In a lot of ways we've regressed significantly -- there is no way to chat with all of my friends at the same time anymore.
posted by miyabo at 9:10 AM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

I really like the delivery in the video. I have to check out some of his other ones now.

Highly recommended. I've been watching his videos for quite a while now. My son and I watch his thrift store videos for inspiration. He also has a few cool "Tech Tales" videos.
posted by Otis at 9:15 AM on May 13, 2015

I was pretty obsessed with AIM back in the day. In a lot of ways we've regressed significantly -- there is no way to chat with all of my friends at the same time anymore.

✿ICQ✿
posted by Fizz at 9:25 AM on May 13, 2015 [4 favorites]

Speaking of ICQ, a lot of the smaller/crappier convenience stores out here, especially out in the country, use the ICQ "uh-oh" message whenever the cashier rings something up. Gets me every time.
posted by RustyBrooks at 9:35 AM on May 13, 2015 [4 favorites]

I was pretty obsessed with AIM back in the day. In a lot of ways we've regressed significantly -- there is no way to chat with all of my friends at the same time anymore.


Never used the main AOL but like everyone else (circa 2000) used the standalone AIM client while in college...and is actually where I met my now wife after she randomly messaged me one day because my little profile blurb sounded interesting.
posted by Captain_Science at 9:37 AM on May 13, 2015 [4 favorites]

"I was pretty obsessed with AIM back in the day. In a lot of ways we've regressed significantly -- there is no way to chat with all of my friends at the same time anymore."

Pidgin.
posted by I-baLL at 9:57 AM on May 13, 2015 [4 favorites]

"And? What happens?"

Thunderbolts and lightning.
Very very frightening me.
posted by I-baLL at 9:58 AM on May 13, 2015 [5 favorites]

✿ICQ✿
Pidgin.

But the thing is, everyone used AIM! None of my friends are on ICQ or Pidgin. A few are on Facebook Messenger and a few are on Twitter DMs and a few are on Google Talk, and a few just use text messages now.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 10:35 AM on May 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

Heh, as someone who has to maintain some really old equipment, this strikes a few of my targets. We just got rid of our last W95 machine a year ago.

I was sort of amused when our corporate IT folks, who are running around like muppets right now removing XP and Vista boxes from the LAN, looked at the old 95 and 98 systems and said meh, whatever, no threats for those old guys anymore.
posted by bonehead at 10:48 AM on May 13, 2015

In the late 90s I spent many hours in AOL's chatrooms. For a while they were accessible to anyone who had an AIM account. I remember sending MP3s back and forth, waiting up to an hour to receive a 3 minute song. Good times. I'm still friends with some of the people I met.
posted by monospace at 10:48 AM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

"But the thing is, everyone used AIM! None of my friends are on ICQ or Pidgin."

Uh, yeah, that's why I suggested Pidgin. It's not a service. It's a client. An aim client, a yahoo chat client, a facebook chat client, etc. This way you'll have your friends, who are on different chat services, in one place!
posted by I-baLL at 11:19 AM on May 13, 2015

I like Trillian as a client.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:24 AM on May 13, 2015

HAH, such fond AOL memories. Parents wouldn't get me a RAW UNFILTERED BELLSOUTH DOT NET internet account, they thought AOL's walled garden would keep me safe from crazy internet people, not knowing I already was one.

I was a moderator in the AOL PC Music and Sound forum when I was around 16 (with access to their weird behind-the-scenes tools) and hosted the weekly MIDI chat room there, organized files, etc. The nice lady in charge, Norma, was legendary for sequencing nothing but Steely Dan MIDI covers. I used to recommend keyboards for new musicians, and give technical advice!

I had several friends there who were high school students in other cities, and who went on to be my working colleagues to this day (literally half our lives later, since we're in our mid-30s now!) I just drove down the other day to hang out with one of these friends. He's a successful film composer and I'm in video games, exactly as we dreamed of when we were hanging out almost 20 years ago in an AOL chat room, bitching about parents, SoundFonts, and how cool Star Wars Episode I was going to be.

Every few years I do this kinda head-trip memory-lane thing (with the latest version, though) and am kind of amazed that it still works. I'm gonna be pretty sad when / if they ever shut down the servers.
posted by jake at 11:25 AM on May 13, 2015 [6 favorites]

Meanwhile, Compuserve was bought by AOL long ago, and the About link on there homepage brags about the "newest version of CompuServe, CompuServe 7.0," launched in 2001.

And then there's Compuserve WOW!, aka the reason wow.com doesn't redirect to World of Warcraft.
posted by JHarris at 12:14 PM on May 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

And then there's Compuserve WOW!, aka the reason wow.com doesn't redirect to World of Warcraft.

For awhile WoW Insider, a WoW group blog run as part of the Joystiq group, was using wow.com, but then AOL decided to run the little puff of nothing that currently resides at http://wow.com instead, relegating Wow Insider to a Joystiq subdomain until they pulled the plug on Joystiq altogether.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:20 PM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

I have a feeling it still works because they've got how many thousands of people sending they $19.95/mo. dutifully (or automatically) for the past 2 decades. Revenue stream!
posted by thecjm at 1:07 PM on May 13, 2015

I loved that there are still AIM spam bots running/messaging you.

Aww. When I saw that there were still people in some of the user-created chat rooms, I thought at first that there was still someone out there, a real person, using these things to talk to other people. Maybe a group of old friends, who got to know each other back in the day through AOL, and who know each other on Facebook and all of that modern stuff, but still like to open up AOL 4.0 out of a kind of collective stubbornness, taking a bit of pride in how long they've managed to keep using AOL chatrooms while everyone else has run off somewhere else. Just them, a couple of weirdo fetish rooms, and an endless expanse of broken links and news from 2003. The only ones left.

...but yeah, spambots that someone's forgotten to turn off is a more likely explanation.
posted by eykal at 1:52 PM on May 13, 2015

If there is not a better way and that thing from 1992 still runs, then why change?

This! I still use an old DOS program for a big chunk of my freelance work, because there is nothing better and all the keystroke combinations are forever in my muscle memory. Have to keep a Windows XP machine because of this (DOS Box does only 80% of what I need, not 100%), but it still works fine and boo hoo for the soul-less corporations who didn't figure out back then that they still need to make money somehow.
posted by Melismata at 2:41 PM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

I stumbled on and copied the buddy in/buddy out .wav files many years ago. I don't know if those would have grown tiresome (never used chat), but I still like the loud, squeaky door hinge and definitve slam as my Windows log on/log off sounds.
posted by Kronos_to_Earth at 5:18 PM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

You guys are talking about AIM like nobody uses it anymore. Did you guys know AIM is still widely used in finance for communicating with brokers? I kid you not. Probably 95% of the street uses Bloomberg to communicate with each other but for some reason, either because of cost (can't beat free), legacy, or compliance reasons, some people (mostly brokers) still use AIM. The brokers use blast lists to send their quotes out to everybody on their list. On the receiving end people have several various brokers constantly pinging them and some people use special chat clients to aggregate all the information. There's even a company that sells a PAID AIM client to aggregate the info. Yes, a paid client to interact with a free chat service.
posted by pravit at 8:40 PM on May 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

Be very careful, this youtube channel is a blackhole. I came for this, and stayed for a bunch of videos about IBM PS/2 and all kinds of other old hardware he found, or random old games, or...

If i had a trust fund or was independently wealthy or something, i think i'd spent a reasonable amount of my time doing basically exactly what he seems to do.
posted by emptythought at 11:21 PM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

If i had a trust fund or was independently wealthy or something, i think i'd spent a reasonable amount of my time doing basically exactly what he seems to do.

Let's find a rich dude to bankroll him hanging out at JScott's place for a few weeks.
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:40 PM on May 13, 2015 [3 favorites]