Aimless Navigation: Wandering a Lost Digital Landscape

AOL Instant Messenger (more commonly and fondly known as AIM) is collecting dust. Since chat functions were built directly into popular sites like Facebook and Google (via Gmail's)-- and also since Twitter took over the world of social media-- AIM is becoming more and more obsolete (and so is AOL). There's no need for an AIM away message on your laptop all day when you can instead simply send out a new tweet, informing your entire fan base (if you're lucky to have one) where you are and what you're doing, if you choose to use Twitter for that purpose.

I remember how magical AIM was back in 1999 when I created my screen name and signed on for the first time. The concept of instant internet communication through IMs, compared to the waiting game of sending and receiving emails, literally blew my 7th-grader mind. Over the years, AIM became far more than a communication tool; it strengthened existing friendships and provided a safer, less awkward way of connecting with my numerous teenage crushes. (Whether or not all that hard work IM-flirting paid off is an entirely different story.) The point is that AIM signified a social revolution for my generation, and its gradual disappearance feels strange and different to me. But the times, they are a-changin'.

Both AIM and Xanga (one of the earlier weblog communities) played a crucial role in my high school social life while growing up in the early 2000s. As an outlet for venting about the woes of adolesence, my Xanga page was both a blessing and a curse. How could someone say so much yet so little at the same time? It's easy when you have an audience of teenagers eager and willing to read and comment, reassuring that all those empty words weren't for nothing.

Actually, the act of posting to my Xanga page as a 17-year-old was not unlike my behavior as a 2-year-old, right after my parents brought my twin brothers home from the hospital: there was a lot of jumping up and down, banging on our cookware with a large rubber spoon, screaming "Look at me! Look at me!" In other words, talking (or shrieking, rather) merely for the sake of being noticed. As high schoolers, our emotionally/sexually frustrated selves sought to be recognized and appreciated just as much as a jealous older sibling. We craved connection without the risk and fear of rejection, and the safety net of the web was there to catch us when we fell.

Let me get one thing straight: I don't regret having a Xanga, because I would have suffocated even more than I already was without one. It's also a hoot laughing at my saptastic, angst-ridden entries (and also embarrasing, but mostly endearing). But while Xanga and AIM did the trick, sometimes I wonder what my high school experience would have been like if sites like Facebook and Twitter had existed. Part of me wonders how easy it would have been to stay in the loop about friends, photos, parties and crushes. Perhaps I wouldn't have felt so isolated from my peers. Maybe I could have found an online community to come out to before the pressure and pain of lingering secrecy did me in.

On the other hand, I probably would've grown up too quickly. There's no doubt that my parents certainly would not have approved of their 14-year-old daughter's membership on one or more social networking sites. I'd probably feel the same too about my own kids-- I already find myself gasping and tsking at profiles of junior high schoolers on Facebook. (A minimum age requirement of 18 would be safest, but it's just too easy for anyone to get around that by lying.)

I'll never know how my life may have turned out if I'd been sucked into the Twitterverse at an early age. Despite being perptetually "in the know," it's quite possible that I wouldn't have felt any less lonely. What happens when you flip through the TV listings on a Sunday afternoon? There are about a thousand channels, yet nothing's really on (until you thankfully come across a rerun of your favorite show). A Facebook friend list isn't too different. Out of 860 faces, I can count the best and truest on one hand.