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Comment by bluedino | Hacker News Reader

AIM was one of those unique things, it was 'cool' even though it was created by AOL.

AOL was the lamest online service, it was what your grandma used. No self-respecting hacker or power user would use AOL. But everyone used AIM.

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You must be young. The AOL hacker scene was quite vibrant. Mass mailers, PR room: server, server when server got banned, cerver. Plus the plethora of exploits. Go to archive.org and lookup aol-files.com.

EDIT: lest I forget AIM pr: darkside

Conclusion does not follow. Many of us skipped AOL entirely. That's not to say there weren't interesting things to do there if you chose to use it, or were forced to use it by circumstance.

Of course it follows. The OP said "no self-respecting hacker" would use AOL/AIM, which is a not only a "no true scotsman" fallacy but untrue. I, too was introduced to the world of programming through AOL chatrooms, and there were some really incredible hackers/programmers who hung out in them.

Fair, though I was referring to the "you must be young".

Yes, I spent a lot of time writing mass mailers, punters, laggers, and much later.. phishing and chat bots.

What a time to be 10 years old.

Not in the UK, everyone used msn (or before that yahoo chat or ICQ)

Same with Australia. All MSN

MSN came after AIM had been around for a little while IIRC.

Before/alongside AIM was ICQ.

Once MSN came around I remember everyone switching because the fonts were somewhat better. Sorry—not everyone. So you had to have each of the clients to talk to everyone.

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