Why AOL Instant Messenger Was So Important for Like 5 Years

AOL Instant Messenger will shut down forever on December 15, but that news isn’t shocking. What’s shocking is that it was still around. But just because AIM had long ago been swept into the dustbin of the internet, to spend a digital eternity taking pictures with Tom from MySpace and listening to pirated music on Napster, doesn’t mean its importance should be forgotten. Because for a brief period of time it was the most important form of communication in every teenager’s life, far more than our parents or children will ever understand.

All good things come to an end. On Dec 15, we'll bid farewell to AIM. Thank you to all our users! #AIMemories https://t.co/b6cjR2tSuU pic.twitter.com/V09Fl7EPMx

— AIM (@aim) October 6, 2017

In the mid ’90s, when the internet really became a thing everyone knew and cared about using, most people connected to it through America Online. (They wore us down by sending everyone a free CD. Every day. For years. A scheme that was incredibly effective.) But this was before everyone had cellphones, let alone smartphones, or they could connect to the web from just a browser, so the only other ways to talk to people was to either call them on the phone, or go walk to their house like some kind of athlete.

Instant Messenger changed all of that in 1997. Suddenly you could talk to all of your friends at once. You could make plans for the weekend, discuss what happened at school, and awkwardly flirt with your crush, simultaneously, all from the comfort of your desk. It’s impossible to overstate how ubiquitous AIM was in the lives of teenagers and college students from the late ’90s to the early ’00s, but having a heart-to-heart talk from seven p.m. until four in the morning with someone you only kind of knew was a common occurrence.

RIP AIM
AOL Instant Messenger

We go way back. You were there with me in the beginning of my internet days.

You’ll never be forgotten. pic.twitter.com/lVvj5VLUS0

— Josh