Everybody remembers the first moment they got addicted to instant messaging. This most likely happened during the America Online craze, which was heaven for us teenagers but hell for our parents, paying approximately $700 an hour for our internet usage. “Why can’t you just talk to your friends on the phone?� they would gripe. But to no avail. If it came down to our parents paying the heating bill or the America Online fees, we’d gladly doublebag a couple sweaters while we type away in our 28.8kbps wonderland.
We endured modem sounds, busy signals, and incredibly slow-loading AOL graphics, but we were hooked. Once we added a few friends to our buddy lists, we couldn’t stop. It was our drug. Twenty friends wasn’t enough. We needed more. Better sign up our little brothers and sisters and quickly enter them into our buddy lists. We secretly wondered how it would feel to have a hundred buddies. We secretly envied the people who did.
We did not, however, envy those kids who had CompuServe. If you knew somebody who used CompuServe, “Fuck them� is the phrase that would come to mind. They didn’t have Gay/Lesbian Chat Rooms to abuse like us AOL kids did. Nothing seemed more earth-shattering to us than entering one of those rooms and typing “25/m/ny…..I WANT A PENIS NOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW�, then hurriedly exiting the chat room, terrified that an actual homosexual would talk to us.
But back to the point: fuck those CompuServe kids. AOL was where it was at and everybody knew it.
And you can admit it: the day that AOL increased the maximum amount of characters you could have in your screenname (from 8 to 12) was the greatest day you’ve ever known. You always knew that the measly eight letters or numbers prevented maximum screenname creativity. With the twelve, the sky was the limit. The limit being twelve characters. But that’s all the sky had to be back in those days. Simpler times.
And over the years, I’ve noticed some particular things that have been constant throughout the history of AIM. And based on those constants, I have compiled the following:
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF INSTANT MESSAGING
1. Thou shalt stare at your screen in a stunned silence if you come back to your computer and realize that you somehow got signed off while you were away, and thus lost potentially dozens and dozens of IMs sent to you. These messages could’ve contained any amount of information, including but not limited to: confessions from one of your crushes, a crucial party heads-up, and drunk IMs from your best friends. When you come back home to a computer that has somehow managed to restart itself, you could not help but think of the away message that got away…
2. Thou shalt go through multiple drafts of away messages at least once a day, trying to find the perfect balance of wit and coolness. You shall achieve neither in the end, and you will feel like an uncreative jackass as you sadly click “Use default away message.�
3. Thou shalt spend many minutes creating the perfect profile, only to be greeted with The Personal Profile you have entered is too long. The limit is 1024 characters. …………….WHAT??! THIS AMAZING MESSAGING CONVENIENCE HAS BEEN CREATED FOR US AND WE CAN’T EVEN WRITE MORE THAN FIVE LINES WORTH OF OVERSIZED NEON GREEN BOLDFACE TYPE IN OUR PROFILES?
4. Thou shalt become way too excited when the “Accept message from new user� message pops up.
5. Thou shalt become way too angry when you click “yes�, then realize it is not a long-lost friend of yours who magically found your screenname, but just an internet whore wanting you to check out her website. (You do. You always do.)
6. Thou shalt check the away message of every screenname on your buddy list as often as possible. Manic away message checking breakouts are most prevalent during the exact moment you sit down to start your homework. You begin to judge a person based on their away messages, i.e. “Wow, Jenny’s a slut for that away message�, or “What an uncreative douchebag Barry is�
7. Thou shalt be furious, sad, and confused all at once when you receive this message: Connection problem with xxx; the file will not be sent. (Your ‘Internet Connection Firewall’ may be on. If you and your buddy are each behind a different firewall, then the connection will not work.) When you receive this message - because hey, you really want that Dispatch bootleg acoustic live unmastered mp3 – you’ll no doubt tell your buddy to “try again in a few secondsâ€?. Then you’ll proceed to check and uncheck any box you can find within the “AIM Optionsâ€? section. And it never works. “I don’t know why this isn’t working!!” you’ll pointlessly type. The moral of this Commandment is simple: firewalls were created to confuse and stifle the youth of America.
8. Thou shalt go through your entire buddy list every few months or so and conjure up crazy reasons to keep certain people on your list that you haven’t communicated with in years. You fight the urge to alphabetize.
9. Thou shalt secretly wish AIM lingo would catch on in real life. You even occasionally throw a “LOL� into real-world conversations, and act like you were just kidding around when it doesn’t fly. But you wish it did. When will the real world come around?
10. Thou shalt notice when certain people have been idle for an unbelievable amount of time. When John hasn’t been at his computer – where he has been every day for the last ten years – for four straight days, you don’t gasp and wonder if John is in some sort of terrible trouble. You pull your roommate into the room and you both stare in awe at the rare “multi-day idle� that is upon you.
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- The end. By the way, I’m phelan..glad to be here at bpbc..don’t be shy with the comments
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well I enjoyed that post. almost all of it was dead-on. i’ll be looking forward to any future posts from the phelan.
Still waiting…
Still waiting…phelan is gone. He moved on to bigger and better things…bastard
[…] Default Away Message […]
Dan, when was this originally posted? It’s absolutely spot-on…makes me reminisce back to my freshman year of college when I had a raging love affair with my laptop and some boy from Cincinnati.