Pour one out soon: AOL Instant Messenger announces it will shut down permanently in December after 20 years of being the penultimate forefront of instant messaging over the internet
Honestly, I don’t think anyone is really ever going to fully understand the importance of AIM in my life, or that I am going to be legitimately sad when it logs off for good on December 15th. And this isn’t so much of just another “something from Danny’s childhood is vanishing for good” kind of emo as much as it is a genuinely true passing on of something that was very integral to my daily living for nearly two full decades.
I still have my original screen name for when I was even still an AOL subscriber for $19.99 a month, and I logged on through their software on a 2400 baud then eventually a 33.6 kbps modem, and have been using it as recently as 2015. Back when I originally made it, I didn’t even grasp what an ISP was, and didn’t realize internet access even existed outside of AOL. I also remember knowing it tied up phone lines and made accessing my house over the phone nearly impossible for whenever my sister and I weren’t fighting over computer time and someone was parked at it, chatting away on the world wide web.
Through AOL did I come and go through my tremendous anime weeb phase of my life, but along the way I made lots of internet friends whom I’d shared countless hours and nights chatting away with and role-playing Ranma 1/2 characters in cleverly-named Members chat rooms. I had like two different internet girlfriends at various points, one of whom I’d actually met in person once at an Anime Expo which was a completely different rabbit hole, but the point is, I learned it was entirely possible to meet, make and maintain real human relationships over the internet in spite of all the endless skepticisms that it was full of creepy terrible predators.
Even after I grew up some, learned more about the internet and realized that I didn’t actually need AOL proper for internet access, AIM itself was still integral in order to keep in contact with people, since society was clearly shifting from people actually calling and speaking with one another, to where everything could be done through computers. At first, instant messaging existed solely as a means of communicating with all my online anime friends whom mostly seemed to all be in California, but I remember the realization of convenience when the day came where I could make simple restaurant lunch plans with my local friends from the ease of computers instead of having to pick up any phones and hope to reach someone.
And then there was the time when AIM was pretty much the de facto means of communication for not just me, but just about everyone everywhere. It didn’t matter that if I were in Virginia or Georgia, at home or at work, if I was logged into AIM, then I was accessible, and everyone I knew who also used it were fair game for random conversations or times to troll. It didn’t matter if it was menial small talk or two minute conversations about baseball, celebrity deaths or more substantial conversations, AIM was the primary means for any sort of discussion.
Eventually, Google rose to power, and in the process stuff like Gmail and Gchat came to fruition, and then AIM had some legitimate competition. Companies like Yahoo, and upstarts like Bonjour and Trillian eventually all released their own messaging platforms, diluting the scene further.
I think one of the big nails in the coffin was the rise of Facebook and its own messenger, but then the evolution of mobile devices, social media and platforms that have become more instant than instant messaging really finished off not just AIM, but just about all computer-based instant messaging, because it got to a point where a computer proper itself wasn’t so much necessary as the mobile devices that just about every person in the world seems to possess.
AIM itself survived a little bit longer than it probably did for most others thanks to third party clients like Pidgin that let me sync just about all of my chat clients into one comprehensive software that I could conveniently run off of a USB stick at my work computer, so I could have a lifeline into the rest of the world while I was trapped at my then-stuffy, stagnant, boring state government job.
It’s really no surprise that AIM is pulling the plug given the evolution of communication in general. In spite of all the poetic waxing, I don’t use it anymore, much less any chat client; 90% of my Facebook messages are conducted via my mobile device. Social media more invasive than ever, and Twitter has created an atmosphere where it feels like the whole world is logged into AOL, except those who aren’t interested are still subjected and inundated with inane bullshit.
But as far as AIM is concerned, they really were the OGs. ICQ snobs can boast all they want about their earlier lineage, but who the hell wanted to be a number when they could have clever screen names that reflected a modicum of personality? AIM had such a huge part of my upbringing, and I can probably say that a large part of me was probably raised by the internet and facilitated by AIM. I probably learned more about the world through the internet than I did absolutely anywhere else, and the shutting down of AIM is almost like seeing your childhood home getting torn down.
