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

Nothing really changes. Everything just accelerates.

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…