desh | (no subject)

I used to have an alternate AIM screenname. Fewer than a dozen people knew it. I'd sign onto it when I was emotional enough about something that I couldn't deal with talking to my whole buddy list on my regular name. This seems to imply:

IM was my main form of realtime communication with friends
I had a lot of realtime communication with friends compared to what I have now (which is probably less communication overall, and more of it via asynchronous stuff like LJ and facebook and email)
When I IMed, I IMed so much that my main buddy list could be overwhelming, whereas now getting an IM from more than 1 or 2 people an evening, or from someone other than the 5ish people I talk to the most, is unusual
I frequently felt emotional enough that I needed to alter my behavior
My friends were online enough, and had predictable enough schedules, that there were a bunch of people who I could reasonably expect to find online at particular times
I talked about how I was feeling with my friends, complaining about people and discussing responses to shared experiences

I really don't remember experiencing any of those too well. I certainly can't fathom my life being like that now; it's changed so much. But parts of it seem kind of nice, and it might be nice to have some of those things back on occasion.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

You could also try another mode-- take an evening stroll after work to a friend's house who lives nearby, call to let me know you're on your way, and I'll be there waiting to let you in, anytime.

I could be convinced to be on IM, also.

Could just be that my friends don't like me anymore, but it seems to me that IM has gone down in popularity a lot since a few years ago - maybe just a difference between middle school->high school->college friends, but maybe people's excitement over it has just worn off.

Same here. Gtalk has also initiated a precipitous decline in my use of AIM, and that's interesting to me because I used to talk to lots of random people and non friends on AIM. Now on Gtalk I mostly talk to people I know really, really well and am ok with potentially interrupting me during work, but not random or less well known people. I won't connect my Gtalk to AIM cause I don't want to have all that temptation at work again.

But even when I do use AIM more, almost no random IMs, only speak with a few friends who don't have Gtalk for some reason. Very cursory conversations.

I really like chatting and still chat with people a lot, but IM in particular has worn off, not sure why.

isn't it weird to realize how different we have been, and how little we sometimes remember about our past selves? i'm not sure which are the nice parts, but i suspect it's the regular interaction with trusted friends bit. i hear that with nurture, those opportunities grow.