Growing Up Web 2.0: Bullied on AOL Instant Messenger (AIM)
Growing Up Web 2.0: Bullied on AOL Instant Messenger (AIM)
The first chapter of my memoir manuscript
Hi, readers! I’m writing a memoir manuscript about growing up online. The project revolves around Xanga, Myspace, and other web 2.0 social media platforms, especially through teenage emo/scene subculture, from the mid-00s to early-10s. Below is an excerpt from the first chapter. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it in an email or comment!
Sometime during the 2004-2005 school year
I jotted down “CHEER” in all caps on a yellow Post-It note. “Cheer what?”
“Cheer TUMBLE,” my sixth grade peer repeated herself over the phone, annoyed. “My username is CheerTumble1993.”
This was the second time I called this friend to ask for her AOL Instance Messenger (AIM) screen name. I called the day before to ask, but forgot to write it down. We weren’t in the same class that school year, unlike when we initially met in first grade when she was the “new girl” at our school. Five years later, at Upper Township Middle School, we rarely saw each other during the school day, aside from an occasional wave in the hallway. Well, I waved eagerly with a “hi!” but she often reciprocated with only a mere smile.
“I got it this time! Will you be online tonight?”
“Probably after dinner,” she replied in a lackluster tone. “I have to go now.”
“Talk to you later!”
She hung up without saying goodbye.
I added her screen name to my AIM contacts list, the one and only person whose screen name I knew. I waited hours in front of my family’s off-white Acer desktop for her to log on. She never did.