Thursday Throwback: AOL

(Every Thursday WKFTB will bring you a throwback, something that reminds us of our late-80s-early-90s childhood. Today's edition: AOL.).

Ahhhh...good ole America Online. You could lump a few other services in here. Prodigy. Netscape. Others I've since forgotten. But AOL was the original and best. It had email, web browsing and -- omg -- this communication tool called INSTANT messaging. Like, you could message someone, instantly.

And the sounds. Oh, who can forget the sounds. "Welcome." "You've got mail." "Goodbye." Plus we had doors crankin open and shut, little beeps and droplet sounds for some reason. It was ill.

It also gave a whole new forum and exacerbated the progress of two things: creeps and people trying to peep porn. Creeps had a slew of new chatrooms to prey on others. Oh, that lesbian chat room you wanted to check out for jokes? Yea, that's all dudes in there. "Huh huh, lesbos bro.."

Just don't ever try to sneak on late at night without first giving your comp a speaker check. Cause you will absolutely blap your whole house with a giant WELCOME in the middle of the night. C'mon, anyone who hears that knows immediately what you're up to. Hide the tissues, bro. Thank your little brother or something for leaving the speakers cranked up playing computer games. I haven't even mentioned the dial-up sounds "ceee booo coooo jjjoo choooo koooooo ppujhhjkhj"

Another great aspect of AOL was the fact that at first everyone had to use it on their phone line. You always knew the families that sweated online because you'd never be able to get ahold of them. Moms, in particular, hated it. "I can never call Ms. Smith, that Johnny is just always online!"

I kind of miss AOL. The orig buddy list was ill. The email was super easy. Combining them all into one system was genius, and really what enabled AOL to take off and become the internet service for the masses. I sort of chuckle when I see people with AOL email addresses still. I know you can just log on to their website now and that's how it's done. But in my head I imagine them dialing up and waiting like 5 minutes and getting blapped in the dome with "WELCOME!"

--Nick