I still remember my ICQ UIN#. I had a seven digit number. Just felt like another phone number to me when i was a teenager. For the longest time I was a diehard ICQ guy. Mostly because you could have messages waiting for you, while with AIM you had to be online to get them. Not online, no messages. WTF was AOL thinking? I don't really remember it ever going down. Everything always does when it comes to tech, at one point or another.
Eventually ICQ started to decline and AIM was becoming the dominant instant messaging platform. Apparently you could get some crazy AIM screen names in the early days. AOL hadn't implemented keywords on registration yet. My AIM username was "SexCow". I 💩 you not. It felt similar to getting a good email address without all those silly extra numbers and Xx_USERNAME_xX bullshit that everyone did.
You HAD to spend at least 15 minutes so you could have that bomb ass away message. i just used %n all the time, it confused the shit out of people, as it would just display their username in the away box.
The good ole days of Internet 1.0 on a 56k modem where it took all night to download one heavily pixelated image of a woman with very little clothing on, only to find out that your parents took the phone off the hook at 4AM and ruined all your hard work. So you said the hell with it and went back to your GeoCities or Angelfire page to talk about it.
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