It all started in late July when I was at Fenway Park watching the Red Sox take on the Orioles. Trade talks involving Nomar were lurking, and everyone in the park appeared to be concerned that he was on his way out. In the third inning, Nomar went deep into the hole and made a great play; the Fenway faithful were on their feet and I couldn’t help but think, “I wonder what his away message is.” I knew I had a problem; I was addicted to AIM (AOL Instant Messenger).
I was very proud of my screen name; I worked hard at keeping up with my profile and I always tried to keep my away messages fresh and humorous. (And for the record, it’s amazing how many people need that eight second fix in their day when they read the profile of someone who attempts to make it entertaining). Some people were so “distraught” that I was retiring from AIM that rumors started to fly that I changed my screen name and didn’t tell anyone, or that I died. There was even one going around that I ran out of material for my profile. My parents consistently told me, “if you spent as much time studying as you do on the computer you’d be a Rhodes Scholar by now.” Maybe that was a stretch, but I was spending a lot of time online.
I always enjoyed dissecting people’s profiles, over-analyzing their quotes, and more or less, trying to figure out what was going on in every aspect of their lives. For example, if my girlfriend’s profile initially had my initials with a heart next to it along with a sappy quote, and then later she removed the heart and brought the quote down two levels of sappy, then everyone in the AIM community knew that she I and were having problems (of course, not that this ever happened to me). It’s this kind of stalker mentality that prompted me to do the unthinkable for a modern college student: give up AIM.
Along with what college to go to, deciding not to start smoking and who to vote for in the 2004 election, this was one of the biggest decisions I had ever made in my entire life. AIM is not just a comfortable setting to talk to someone new or a forum for a seventh grader to ask out his first girlfriend; it is a social pipeline that is a common denominator for college students across the country. If I was going to do this, I was going to have to make some rules for myself so that I wouldn’t fall off the face of the earth to everyone who didn’t live within 20 feet of me. The rules were as follows:
1.I had to call my friends from home at least twice a week. This is an uncomfortable thing to do for males, so it was a big deal.
2. I couldn’t allow myself to join “face book” because that would be the epitome of “copping out.” I hear it’s just as, if not more, addicting than AIM.
3.I had to make sure that everyone knew I was still alive without compromising my original goal based on this decision.
Rule number one wasn’t a problem. In fact, my friends and I got a lot more accomplished on the phone. I even found that it isn’t impossible to talk about life with my guy friends on the phone for more than ten minutes. Rule number two proved to be a little more difficult because it seemed like a much less timeconsuming and obsessive alternative. Fortunately, one of my friends used the line “I’m so gonna Facebook you tomorrow,” as a pick-up line. All of a sudden rule number two was not all that unreasonable. I knew rule number three was going to be difficult and it still is; there’s really no other solid alternative to stay in touch with your second and third tier friends from high school that you would still like to talk to. This dilemma proved to be the most difficult part of giving up AIM, and I still haven’t been able to come up with a solution.
Are there a lot of people and a lot of things I miss about not being a part of the AIM community? Sure, but the amount of positives that have come from giving it up have been astounding. I don’t procrastinate as much, I watch more news, I get to bed about two hours earlier and I feel like those who I have been able to keep in touch with have become much closer. I’ve been clean for three months now and I don’t think I’m going to go back. Feel free to try to an AIM cleansing for a week and see if you can make it, you might be surprised as to how much more you get done.
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