You Are Not Your Own Substack

You Are Not Your Own Substack

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You Are Not Your Own Substack
You Are Not Your Own Substack
90's AOL Chat Rooms and the Desire to be Desired

90's AOL Chat Rooms and the Desire to be Desired

Nothing really changes. Everything just accelerates.

O. Alan Noble's avatar
O. Alan Noble
Jul 30, 2025
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You Are Not Your Own Substack
You Are Not Your Own Substack
90's AOL Chat Rooms and the Desire to be Desired
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a man sitting at a table using a laptop computer
Photo by Nicolò Canu on Unsplash

When I was 14 or maybe 15, I had this terrible habit of going on AOL (modem sounds) and joining chat rooms and asking a/s/l to meet girls my age to chat with. We’d share messages over AIM (I think my AIM handle was something like ZeroBoy, just to give you a sense of how things were going at the time). I’d chat up three or…

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