AOL Instant Messenger was in the beginning. That wasn't the beginning. Talkomatic, Compuserve, and Internet Relay chat preceded it. AIM was the gateway to real-time, all-the-time internet communication for the normies.
You don't need to be a computer nerd to ride the AIM train. Your parents got a compact disc in the mail, you plugged your corded phone into a modem, and you were off. You were on. You would never again live an offline life, even if you were online, because the portal would disappear behind you once you crossed through.
AIM was launched 25 years ago. My basketball jersey number was tacked on to my initials, and it propelled me into a universe of endless pixels, endless distraction, and a penchant for bland screen names. It was a live social network. Millions of people scrambled to their seats to see who had just signed on, who was down to chat, after a digital door creaked open.
Sometimes you had to leave. I'm not here, you threw up an Away message. I'm in class and my dad needs to use the comp. I have left you with an emo quote that shows how deep I am. There is a song lyric that says I am so over you. My message is not aimed at you.
I don't miss Away Messages. I miss the newness of the internet of the 1990's and I also miss being away. This is about the Away Messages themselves. The bits of code were used to build Maginot lines. An Away Message was a text box full of possibilities, a mini-MySpace profile or a Facebook status update years before either existed. An Away Message popped up as a response after someone had sent you a message, but it was already visible to that person.
This is not something that exists in our modern messaging apps. You're going to insist that I mention some of the messaging guardrails that tech companies have rolled out. There is a mode on the iPad called "Do Not Disturb", and on the iPhone there is a mode called "Focus".
The closest thing we have to Away Messages is the chat app Slack. You can either say that you're out of office or use the "sick" option on your profile. You are once again behind on a deadline, so please DND. This is an invitation to be disturbed.
These aren't guardrails. These are squishy orange cones that we all plow through. The phrases "Focus, Schedule Send" are from a work-obsessed culture. Bring back the poetry, the pink fonts and the tildes.
I am reminiscing about an entirely different technology protocol. There is instant messaging and text messaging. 25 years ago the two experiences were very different. When you were a client of AIM, you could send information to an internet server when you were a client, and you could show the same information to your friends when you were a client. It used a proprietary protocol called OSCAR. Live chat was realtime. Text messaging is referred to as Short Message Service. The majority of this happened on mobile devices.
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