AIM and you: What's your progression?

That's not excess. That's like ... I can't even come up with the word for it.

(I once had 40 or so away messages, and I thought that was excessive.)

 

Some of my friends used to ask me all the time what the total was, and I loved their reactions, which is probably a big reason I never deleted any of them before my sophomore year.

 

AIM and you: Perfect together.[/jerseygirl]

 

I'm signed onto AIM approximately 18 hours a day.

 

Yeah, mikey. I mean, who would ever send so many messages they would get that many in return? I mean, that would be like having 25,000 PMs.

 

When I first got AOL back in 1993 I would instant message on there all the time. I could have 5-6 conversations going at once. By 1999 I would rarely IM while on AOL Now I never do it. I think I might have used AIM twice in the last three years. I might have used Yahoo Messenger once or twice in my life.
A blue moon happens more often than I text with my cellphone.
I just prefer voice conversations to textual ones.

 

I feel alternately sick and sorry for the latest digital generation, most of whom have never known - and will never know - a moment's solitude.

 

I wonder how much this has to do with age. When I was in HS/College, at any given time half my buddy list or more was online. Now, on the very rare occasion I sign on, there's not more than 3-4 people on. We've all got jobs, families, some are in law/med school, etc. I wonder if current HS/College students use it like we used to.

Or maybe this really is just part of the fascinating progression of the internet. I was watching ESPN Classic last month, just before the NCAA title game, when they were replaying old title games. The UConn-Duke game from 1999 I believe, mentioned 'AOL Keyword XXX' at the bottom of the screen for something or other. 'AOL keyword' is a part of internet history by now.

It just seems like the most popular internet ideas like that don't seem to last more than 5-7 years or so, many even less than that. I remember when everyone used Napster, then it got shut down in its popular incarnation (I know it's still around, but I no nobody that uses it). Or Friendster. Or others.

I suppose myspace, facebook and youtube will be around for a while, just as yahoo, google, amazon, ebay, etc have been. But I'm sure that in 10 years, other sites and functions I use every day now will be long forgotten.

 

I have and use only MSN. It's on basically 24/7. I live about three hours outside the town I grew up in, so I stay in touch with only the close college friends by using MSN.

Thing is, with working afternoons and most of my buddies working 9-5 desk jobs — two of them are IT guys — I log on at home in the morning and they're on at work. It passes the time for them and I take breaks from housework or whatever to see what's up.

At work, I use meebo to log onto MSN. And I only ever message someone when I've got a minute — which isn't often.

 

In a way, earlier generations (the ones just before all the IMs and texting and whatnot) had their own things that kept them from going outside or from enjoying solitude. We had TV. Three basic channels, plus a couple of independent stations.

Seemingly every generation finds its own ways of depriving itself of what the older generations once had.