Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An oral history of the AIM away message

invisionapp.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 68 posts

Re: An oral history of the AIM away message

#41

Post by rconti »

turdnagel wrote: post #33
rconti wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conclusion does not follow. Many of us skipped AOL entirely. That's not to say there weren't interesting things to do there if you chose to use it, or were forced to use it by circumstance.

Of course it follows. The OP said "no self-respecting hacker" would use AOL/AIM, which is a not only a "no true scotsman" fallacy but untrue. I, too was introduced to the world of programming through AOL chatrooms, and there were some really incredible hackers/programmers who hung out in them.

Fair, though I was referring to the "you must be young".

Re: An oral history of the AIM away message

#42

Post by sizzle »

alphis001 wrote: post #29

This is BS. The away message was invented by AOL "proggers" which included, amongst other features, the Away Message. This was long before AOL simply absorbed that feature. If you remember Fate/FateX, Sublime, Paladin, Magenta, and the other infinite number of tools many of them had this feature. AOL just copied it because like most awesome things, it was invented by the users' creativity. AOHell4LYFE. -~[1337 tewlz]…

I used to use all these AIM programs, which got me interested in coding!

I enjoyed reverse engineering AIM exploit programs, there was one called subterfuge by sevens from esotericcode.com below... Thanks for the nostalgia!

https://web.archive.org/web/20060701053020/http://www.esoter...

Re: An oral history of the AIM away message

#43

Post by Falling3 »

rubicon33 wrote: post #39
empath75 wrote: post #25

Slack was probably the last straw that broke aim. We used aim internally at aol for work related messaging up until slack came out and people started using it one team at a time. It got to the point that so many teams were using it that aol bought an enterprise license for it and that was basically it for aim as a product.

Didn't AIM for consumers shut down long before slack came out?

No, Slack was initially released in 2013. AIM was shut down at the end of 2017.

Re: An oral history of the AIM away message

#44

Post by sizzle »

patrioticaction wrote: post #37
petropolisful wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you remember Fate/FateX, Sublime, Paladin, Magenta Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time

Punting was my first exposure to cyber warfare, miss those days

I enjoyed reverse engineering AIM exploit programs, there was one called subterfuge by sevens from esotericcode.com

https://web.archive.org/web/20060701053020/http://www.esoter...

Re: An oral history of the AIM away message

#45

Post by ajkjk »

dandigangi wrote: post #4

This was about 90% of the conversations my friends and I had: Them: "hey whats up" Me: "nm you?" Them: "nm" Me: "cool" EOL

I would come home from middle school and have multi-hour conversations with the people I had just seen at school, plus a few strangers from the internet, only taking a break for dinner. It was an unusual time.

Re: An oral history of the AIM away message

#46

Post by 1123581321 »

Bluecobra wrote: post #7
dandigangi wrote: post #4

This was about 90% of the conversations my friends and I had: Them: "hey whats up" Me: "nm you?" Them: "nm" Me: "cool" EOL

Same here, also I remember having lots of "warn" wars too.

I remember the paranoia involved in that, since someone couldn’t earn you unless you’d sent them a message. If you and A were warning each other, you’d stop replying to A, but A might recruit B and C to start a friendly chat with you and then warn you when you’d responded enough. So you’d get a seemingly unrelated “hey what’s up?” and try to figure out if it was safe to talk to them.

Re: An oral history of the AIM away message

#47

Post by 52-6F-62 »

XJ6 wrote: post #12
bluedino wrote: post #10

AIM was one of those unique things, it was 'cool' even though it was created by AOL. AOL was the lamest online service, it was what your grandma used. No self-respecting hacker or power user would use AOL. But everyone used AIM.

Not in the UK, everyone used msn (or before that yahoo chat or ICQ)

MSN came after AIM had been around for a little while IIRC.

Before/alongside AIM was ICQ.

Once MSN came around I remember everyone switching because the fonts were somewhat better. Sorry—not everyone. So you had to have each of the clients to talk to everyone.

Re: An oral history of the AIM away message

#48

Post by w0m »

sjdegraeve wrote: post #14

If you're wondering what people (teen girls) used to put in their away messages, I've been running a site since 2003 that has acted as a database of these "witty profiles". https://web.archive.org/web/20030416074540/http://www.wittyp...

Kudo's for WBM link; it's fun to see Then vs Now.

Re: An oral history of the AIM away message

#49

Post by icedchai »

empath75 wrote: post #25

Slack was probably the last straw that broke aim. We used aim internally at aol for work related messaging up until slack came out and people started using it one team at a time. It got to the point that so many teams were using it that aol bought an enterprise license for it and that was basically it for aim as a product.

To think that AIM could've been Slack. In the 90's and 2000's, we used it just like people use Slack today.
Post reply on HN