AIM Retrospective: RIP 1997-2017

AOL Instant Messenger shut down on December 15, 2017. So let's take a trip back to the '90s and early 2000s when AIM was a major player in the IMing market worldwide!

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● Music used in order of appearance:
"Rotations 2," "Midnight Breaks 1"

[LGR]

Correction: Pidgin shouldn't have been grouped in with the other chat services since it's not a separate protocol or anything. It's closer to Trillian in that it lumps a bunch of IM services together into one client. I did, however, use it around the same time as those I listed so it seems I got my memories mixed up, sorry!
EDIT: There also seems to be confusion from saying ICQ is a later service than AOL Instant Messenger. While it's true it predated the public AIM launch by several months, AOL's Instant Messenger/Buddy List chat was released with AOL in 1989. AIM was simply the standalone version of the existing chat, which predated ICQ by 7 years.

[BudgetBuildsOfficial]

Well there goes the AOL Subscription I got someone for Christmas.

[lucahjin]

what memories.... I remember setting up my AOL profile with special coding to make colours, special text and music lyrics.. How times have changed. I'll never forget!

[Guanthwei]

This video made me cry. I miss those days, so much, when I'd come home from school and turn on my computer, download a bunch of MP3s and listen to Shoutcast radio stations or AudioGalaxy. I'd have AIM and ICQ running, mIRC sometimes to find more MP3s and some ROMs. Hanging out in Yahoo Messenger chat rooms, roleplaying in AOL's Star Wars simming chat rooms, talking to my online girlfriend at the time (2 years)... God this was my life, this was my everyday... The internet really feels hollow anymore. Since torrenting is pretty much dead, or so unsafe that it's not even worth it to me anymore... Since there's no ISPs out there with dedicated social areas like AOL's chat rooms and Yahoo messenger's old chat rooms... Or Myspace's forums... Now all the social circles are either toxic or just so fragmented it's hard to keep your ducks in a row. Things were a lot simpler back then when it came to the internet. Everything was so much more together, unified. Now everything's so fragmented... One of the saddest things for me is that I made real friends online back then, had my first love online (we met a bunch of times, went to the prom together), had an online persona as a second life... Yea I was a geek with social anxiety, big surprise. The internet was my life. These days... I get sick of the internet, I feel lonely out there in this cyber ocean. God this nostalgia is hitting me hard, I'll shut up now.

[fortherecord]

This reminds me of a couple years ago when TWISTED SISTER announced they were breaking up... and I honestly thought they had been broken up for 30 years already.

[pushinguproses]

My first experience with being online was with AOL and then later chatting through AIM as a separate client. It's sad knowing an important part of my life will be no more, but I can't say I will miss it. Like most people, I ended up moving on to other things and the way we communicate has evolved, but I'll always hold on to those memories.

[GeminiWoods]

Oh man, this killed me a little inside. AIM and Yahoo messenger were a big part of my teen life. All those late night conversations with friends... Then World of Warcraft came along...

[bperl]

I asked my girlfriend, awkwardly, out over AIM. 10 and a half years, one cross country move, three cats and one kid later we are still together.

[ZombiesAreJerks]

Fun fact! AIM didn't have a file size cap. It was an awesome to share large files with other people for free.

[smiththers]

This video pulled almost every heart string for me as I too grew up and met so many people online with AOL and aim. Looking back at saved chats I realize just how crazy things were as a youngan.... Thanks for the fond memories clint!

[ProjectPenguinNetwork]

Kids these days won't understand the Limewire... Basically giving your PC Cancer in exchange for an MP3 File

[rickymeadows]

AIM is responsible for me meeting my wife back in 2003. We've been together going on 15 years and have four beautiful kids together. I'm grateful for the impact it had on my life 😁.

[Aboveup]

That ICQ "Uh-oh!" noise haunts me to this day.

[MauriceKon]

i still use the ICQ "AH OH!" sound as my whatsapp sound.
legends never die.

[TrolleyMC]

Limewire, boy. That was like having unprotected sex with the internet.

[FrankTech]

1996-2003 was imo the best years of the internet.. miss the days of simplistic tech.. dialup and chat rooms, aim and yahoo IM. Was cool chatting with strangers or coming up with away messages or whatever. Miss those days..

[nyastclair]

I logged into AIM like a year or so before it shut down. Looking at my old buddy list of people and seeing how not a single one of them was online was a really depressing moment. Wish I could go back to the early 2000s for 1 more day.

[PauleyDucati]

Man I miss those days. I have the AIM "receive message" sound as my work email notification hahaha. You know what's funny that i was thinking about recently... back then, people put much effort into personalizing AIM, MySpace, Live/Dead Journals with music and fonts and buddy icons (which I forgot about until watching your video) and particularly early cellphones with ringtones... now it is INFINATELY easier to create and set custom ring tones etc. and NO ONE DOES IT! Aside from a co-worker's phone and my own, I have not heard a custom phone ring tone in a long time. Everyone just uses the pre-loaded stock ring tones. That just blows my mind. The poisonous vanity of social media is at an all time high now, yet for some reason no one personalizes ringtones anymore. Very strange! Awesome video!

[LightTheUnicorn]

While I never used AIM, I remember spending way, way too many hours each night after school chatting to people over MSN Messenger.

While my school days weren't exactly what I'd call the highest point in my life, the amount of fun and random conversations I had via IMs I definitely remember fondly.

You always know how to do a good throwback, LGR! I do actually miss MSN Messenger in a weird sorta way.

[Jomander]

As someone born in 97 it is weird to think how fast the internet evolved. By the time I was allowed online most of these types of services were at least starting to be irrelevant and newer modern services/websites like YouTube started to take their place. Crazy to think how different my life would be if I was born a few years earlier or later.