Ahh… Hanging with friends gathered around a PC and trolling pedos on AIM. So weird that age, sex, and location were the primary opening lines of communication for a while. Even stranger that creepy dudes in their 40s were so honest about it while trying to pick up kids on the Internet.

I never understood that, I never participated in that weird ASL greeting, even as a naive kid who didn’t even have social experience I felt that was creepy and dangerous to share that kind of thing, and I resented how it basically turned every conversation into “Is it remotely possible we could fuck.”

I’m so glad the internet outgrew that silly trend and became so much more refined, intelligent and respectful.

I remember (as a girl) wanting to talk to another girl my age in a chatroom. The rest of the room started asking if I was a lesbian.

Like we couldn’t just talk to people online without bringing sex into it. I just wanted to make some friends.

I feel like if parents took the internet more seriously from the start and were more actively engaged in what their rotten teenagers were getting up to online we might have had at least a slowdown of the awful decay of society as our worst intrusive thoughts now not only have space to be seen without consequence, we have entire communities supporting each other’s rotten intrusive thoughts.

Honestly, if my parents had any idea how many creeps were on AOL, I probably would’ve been banned from it. We’re like the “grew up with no seatbelts and survived” version of internet users.