On Friday, December 15th, and end of an era was finally put to rest. AOL Instant Messenger – or abbreviated as AIM – was officially shut down.
If you grew up as a kid or teenager in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, then you don’t need us to explain the popularity of Instant Messaging platforms like AIM and MSN Messenger.
For some, it was a great way to communicate with your friends, acting as the precursor to text messaging as the ideal way to have a private conversation. Hell, some of us even discovered their first crushes through instant chat because we were too nervous to find all that out in real life, right? It also birthed communicative acronyms like “lol” and “g2g” that have taken a mainstay in our everyday colloquial linguistics.
You may’ve owned a webcam, and had several different accounts because you kept getting blocked by a certain person. You probably changed your user or screen name to something incredible random and silly, like $K@T3R-D00D.
Well, you’re not along, because pretty much everyone had a weird online name, including some of your favourite NHL players that grew up in that era.
With the popularity of social media apps like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, internet consumers have found more efficient and easier ways to instantly communicate, making AIM officially a thing of the past.
(h/t NHL)
