The panic of crafting the perfect AIM away message could ruin my entire night.
By @mae · Nostalgia
Kids today will never know the sheer terror of seeing your crush log on, trying to play it cool, and then spending 45 minutes trying to find the perfect Dashboard Confessional lyric for your away message to be mysterious.
The full story
I'm talking about a full-blown crisis in our family's computer room, which smelled faintly of dust and hot plastic. It would start with the sound of the dial-up connection, that sacred symphony of screeches and beeps that meant you were ONLINE. Then it would happen. The little yellow running man would pop up in the corner of the screen. *~*CoOlGuY23*~* has signed on. My heart would immediately start hammering in my chest. You couldn't just message him. That would be insane. You had to wait. You had to seem busy, important, like you had a life outside of waiting for his screen name to appear on your buddy list. The real battleground was the away message. It couldn't be too thirsty. It couldn't be boring. It had to be a perfect blend of witty, mysterious, and emotionally available, but not TOO available. I'd scroll through lyric websites, trying to find that one obscure line from a Saves The Day song that would make him think, 'Wow, she GETS it.' And then the ultimate power move: he'd go away. a/w school work. Was he really doing school work? Or was this a passive-aggressive response to my own meticulously chosen away message? The entire evening's emotional drama was communicated through cryptic one-liners and buddy icon changes. What a time.
How people voted
- Facts — 33% (41 votes)
- Depends — 40% (51 votes)
- No Way — 27% (34 votes)
Readers are split: “Depends” leads with 40% — 126 votes and 5 comments so far.
What people are saying
@yaralately — I feel like we all collectively decided this was a universal experience, but I don't think it was this deep for most people.
@jaredish — This just proves people have always been desperate for external validation online.
@jakobok — And this is why kids today are anxious, we trained ourselves to be this way.
@maraish — Ah yes, a much simpler and healthier time.
@quinnok — This is the same energy as me re-watching my own instagram story 50 times to see if it's coming across the right way lol.
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