It was like an immediate blast from the past! The noises.. the messages.. the away messages. Just brought my back to a simpler time.
Remember those days? You’d post the away messages featuring some song lyric that symbolized your mood.. others would ponder its meaning.. you’d slam that ‘door shut’ noise when you offline.. how many fights between couples ended with that AOL noise? And the AOL chatrooms? My God.. those bizarre and weird chat rooms, making friends with people who you’d never see..
I actually made a few real friends on AOL believe it or not.. some are actually now “Facebook” friends.. So that’s the real internet now, right?
One shocking thing I noticed tonight: People are still on AOL, including MDrudge, who I think is the actual Matt Drudge. He messaged me once on there years ago a night before he was going to appear on CSPAN. He confirmed the air date .. I think I may have framed the conversation screen shot.
I also thought back to my original internet exploration.. besides that ridiculous ICQ program, I frequented the world of CHAT1.COM .. check that website, it still exists.. but the chat portion has some error that forever will stricken it from the net..
The good old days. Dial up—you could unplug yourself for a while when you were done online..
Now we are always connected everywhere. Then we chose when to be, and decided what others would hear.
Which time was easier? Which would you prefer?
The world of the net has changed.
I just wish those old AOL sound files would still be used somewhere ..
