Gabrielle Lee
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A Tribute to AOL Instant Messenger (AIM)

10/24/2017

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OH, AIM.

WE GO WAY BACK.

How many relationships have you recorded over time? How many friendships continued, romances kindled, feelings hurt and rejuvenated and cycling all over again? How many sexbots have I encountered through you when my password was hacked? How often have I spent clicking open your vertical portal, windows popping open as the distinctive bloo-do-doop invites me to a new surprise? 

Late nights in front of the glow of my computer screen were the norm throughout high school, undergrad, grad school. Even now, in the "real world," I cling on to the bit of nostalgia that you offer--that same, unchanging sound that was there when I met my best friends, when I flirted with my first boyfriend, when I had my first kiss. I spent countless two-AMs with you, hiding in my bed and pretending to write papers while I was not-so-secretly hanging out with my friends. 

And all the penpals I made because you exist! I met two of my closest friends because of you--one faded, the other still here. I met a community of people who loved and supported me, whom I loved and supported, where we masqueraded as fantasy-Quidditch nerds but were really leaping into a pile of friends who understood, who accepted, who loved. 

I read articles now about how everyone is addicted to screens. It's probably true, but I ignore it, because beyond the screens, I know there are people on the other side. It's like saying that I'm addicted to books, diving into the fantasy lands where things don't have to be real, where I can just close the cover and shimmy back into "reality." Not that I'm actually doing that--I'm still living in my head, and I know this. I feel--I feel--that the stories I see are reality, that the reality I live is fiction, and sometimes I can't tell the difference between the two. I blur the lines between the worlds until everything I feel is both real and unreal, the stories we create hardly any different from the fictions published between glue-bound spines. They are recorded in your chat history, stories of the person I used to be. When you close down, so will the old me.
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