On Friday, Yahoo! and AOL discontinued the once wildly popular AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), one of the earliest precursors to texting and social media that offered the world a glimpse of what communication in the Information Age might look like.
If we’re being honest, most of us weren’t even aware that AIM was still around, but nevertheless, news of its demise gave us an opportunity to mourn one of the original chat programs that connected us to the outside world.
And that included several NBA players who reminisced about their experiences with AIM in a piece by Yaron Weitzman of Bleacher Report.
Knicks center Joakim Noah, for his part, proved that the stars are just like us by revealing that he too had an embarrassing screen name that he’d just as soon forget.
As for his screen name, Noah is at first reticent to share.
“Damn, that’s personal,” he says before acquiescing. “It was actually ‘Doggystyle.'” There were some numbers tacked on at the end of the screen name, but Noah won’t share those, citing privacy concerns. He insists the moniker was not chosen for sexual reasons.
“It was because of the Snoop Dogg album. That was my favorite album,” Noah says. “I mean, I was so young that I don’t think I or other people my age knew what doggy style was. And anyway, I was in France at the time. There you call it ‘levrette.'”
We’ll take your word for it, Noah. We’re in absolutely no position to judge. Although, whatever numbers he decided to tack on to the end of it would probably get to the truth of the matter.
In any case, let’s all take a moment of silence for a software program that was the source of a lot of joy and frustration in our friendships and romantic lives during our formative years, not to mention the progenitor of the terrible anxiety and dread that accompanies the ellipses that pop up while the person on the other end is typing a message.
