AOL Instant Messenger to be killed Dec 15, 2017

Never used it.

I read this week that at one point in the 90s 50% of all CDs produced were for AOL.

It was essential in the old days of CS.

I tried for a while then realized that resistance was futile.

I bet Ramplate was an mIRC dude.

You'd lose your bet

My AIM name was sp1007. AOL was a huge part of my life in high school.

Notable experiences:

1) I was a regular in the smashing pumpkins private chat room. While I was doing the newspaper/entertainment review thing in high school, very actively involved in my youth group, and had a good group of friends, getting time at night to chat with my online friends was my happiest time of social interaction. I still have friends to this day on Facebook/Instagram/Twitter that I met back in those days, many of which I met in various cities across the U.S., went to concerts with, fell in and out of love with, etc. One of my greatest online friends was Laura, who passed of cancer not too long ago.

The private SP chat room had its own share of drama and craziness. We old schoolers were laid back, good friends, just shot the shit. One of the regulars became infamous, unfortunately: anon27.tripod.com/XSpaceboy1/sam.html (aka Sam Manzie). You can google Sam - he's on Murderpedia. tl;dr is that he was participating in a police sting of a pedophile he came into contact with online, abruptly ended his cooperation, then "snapped," and molested and killed a kid selling school candy or something to that effect. The bizarre thing to me is that it became a news story at the time and started a conversation in my English class about if selling candy door to door should be discontinued because of that incident. Anyway, I linked to Sam's page because a lot of us chatters had our own Tripod or Geocities Pumpkins page. I wouldn't consider Sam one of my closest buddies from the room - he wasn't someone I regularly chatted with in side chats, but he was always polite and had a dry humor from what I vaguely remember.

Anyway, around 1997 we had new folks start joining in the room, but they were all about online relationships and romance, and they ended up forming cliques and enemies and all kinds of weird online drama. They would also have a member of their group of friends "camp" in the room so they would be room moderator and kick out whom they chose (at least I think that's how it worked). We ended up migrating to the Smashing Pumpkins messageboard where even more relationships, friendships, pregnancies, marriages, divorces, cheating, and shenanigans transpired. One guy got into a relationship with the aforementioned Laura and ended up visiting her - she woke up one morning to him and her entire, rare Pumpkins collection gone. That's why none of you are allowed to ever visit me - no way I'm letting any of you near my Animated Series Batmobile (lol, I kid).

I actually ended up spending more time on the CS! boards because the drama on the Pumpkins board was so intense and involved and ridiculous that the only way I could escape it was to just walk away. Billy Corgan ended up shutting down the boards because of how negative they had become, actually. Someone is going to say the CS! board had plenty of drama, and I hear of drama on this board happening back in the day, but I've luckily not been a part of it as far as I know.

2) One time I got our entire family's account blocked for swearing in a public chat room. My parents are hardcore nazis about cursing and other things, and I knew it would forever change their perception of me - I proceeded to call AOL, impersonate my mother, and talk us out of being blocked.

I think my mom may have as well. I know her password for everything (she is a hacker's wet dream), so I was able to do all the account verification AOL required when you call, and I'm sure I was able to log into her AOL and intercept the email as well. I recall having a pop up message saying something about being blocked for TOS Violations, though. I think. They say your memory is usually filled in with details that aren't actually real, so who knows.

Monday, March 31, 2008
JJBBoonndd (7:43:09 PM):
Watch OUT...Radioactive Maaaaan!
thebtskink (7:43:52 PM):
heh
JJBBoonndd (7:44:48 PM):
sorry, im bound by randomness today
thebtskink (7:45:10 PM):
i guess so
thebtskink went idle at 8:00:59 PM

Anubis452.

Oh the late night sessions....

Ohhh Atomic Ox, I got into some major shit with that stupid screen name, sometimes involving the police. I was an asshole as a teenager.

Only as a teenager?  Boy do I have you beat.