I Admit It: I Miss AOL
As a 30-year-old white guy, this is about as close as I can get to a hot take. Here’s why I miss the heyday of the perennially mocked, universally detested internet giant…
Bad Screen Names
For a large majority of twenty and thirty-somethings, there’s nothing more embarrassing than recalling your first screen name. Created during a period in your life when you possessed a truly stunning inability to tell the difference between lifelong passions and passing fads, most early screen names reflect interests that we’d prefer to forget. I know my Buddy List circa 1998 featured testaments to everything from KoRn to The Undertaker to the number 69. I even remember with particularly horrific glee one friend from my blindingly white suburban town who christened himself as a SnoopSoldier.
Creating a screen name was an important step in our adolescent development. By choosing that name, you weren’t just publicly declaring your support for a given band or movie or sports team, you were actively incorporating them into your own identity. At least when it came to the online world, you actually became a SnoopSoldier; after all, random people in chat rooms had no idea you looked more like Frankie Muniz than a gangsta rapper.
