Where were you the day that AIM shut down? The official end date is December 15, 2017, but they announced the end in October 2017.  I was sitting at my desk, at my adult job, already feeling the  feels of my youth that is slipping away. (I LOVE my job - don't get me wrong.) There's just something weird about achieving that "thing" you've been getting prepared for since birth, essentially, amirite?

I was in my "feels", as the kids would say, because there was a national conference for the organization that I poured my heart and soul into during my undergrad - PRSSA - that day in Boston, and it was my first year not attending as a student. Then, this tweet came on my timeline and the falling rocks of my feels avalanched:

Did they really have to say "all good things come to an end" Right in front of my salad? More like right in front of the tears I cry while my youth slowly slips away from me, under the ballet flats I traded in my high-top Vans for?

To end the era, they are running a "AIM Memories" campaign. In their recent blog post, they encapsulated the exact experiences we can relate to when it comes to the era in which the way we communicated with our friends changed. AIM was the original group chat. What would 13-year-old you say if you told them you could have group Snapchats now? I would say, "You know I can't snap, stop making fun of me!"

However, the next cultural shift may be upon us soon - and AOL may be behind it! In their blog post, they left this cryptic message:

"We are more excited than ever to continue building the next generation of iconic brands and life-changing products for users around the world."

Take that as you may, but I'll be waiting around for the next thing from AOL now. To commemorate this loss, I'll be reminiscing my cringiest moment from that era. I'll be reliving the phenomenon that happens when you combine new technology and raging hormones. Please join me in the comments, by leaving your fondest and most awkward AIM memories!

1. Making up a fake boyfriend

Okay, bear with me here. Everyone had a date for their significant other in their profile. I was a hopeless, ugly teenager. I did what I had to do - just so I could have a date in my profile like everyone else.

2. Getting rejected by my crush

I messaged me crush in AIM (after finally working up the courage),only for him to tell me to to never, ever do it again the next day in religion class.

3. Getting banned from chatrooms constantly

Those chatrooms have tricky rules. They didn't let your username include your school name, or "bubble butt", unfair right? My mom would spend her nights in the phone with AOL, trying to redeem my account and her faith in me.

4. Secret Spammers

Friday nights were time for AIM. Before we grew to be awkward teenagers at the mall, we were middle schoolers on AIM. There was a group of the kids in may grade who would enter a group chat, immediately spam, then get kicked out by AOL for spamming. Not only was this annoying, but it also broke up the conversation. What if I was just in the middle of getting the hot middle school goss?

5. Is this a...?

Myself and two others of my classmates were usually the only two online at the wee hours of 11PM - I know, so late. Part of it was FOMO for me, and part of the was being in love with the male classmates who stayed. The complicated part was that the girl classmate, and friend of mine (who still is my friend, you know who you are!), was also in love with him - even more than me. Looking back, I don't blame this boy for staying awake and chatting with these two girls who were fawning over him.

6. Is 5 screen names over doing it?

Yes, five. I had three screen names: NTV823, iCKYNiKKi823, AEROGURL87,  TrackxTragedy and ShakexxIt87. Granted, not all of them were active at once. There as absolutely no point in having multiple screen names. Why did we do this? I only confused people.

7. The colorful jacket gang

You best believe I brought my middle school's politics online. I've been stirring the pot on the internet since I popped out of the womb, starting with trolling Lizzie McGuire's outfits on the Disney Channel website. Also, please do NOT start with me about how I no longer recognize the shows on there. There's a Tangled series? Anywho, the girls who claimed themselves to be popular all happened to have the same color North Face and South Pole jackets - black - so they called themselves the "black jacket gang". Being the voice for the bourgeoisie  since middle school, I took a stance on this unjust monopoly. In rainbow letters, I put "COLORFUL JACKET GANG" in my AIM profile. THAT THAT POPULAR GIRLS!

I'd love to her your stories, please comment them below, or feel free to tweet me! Don't forget to subscribe to the newsletter as well for updates.

September 24, 2016 was a jam packed day for the Fenway area. On Landsdowne and Ipswich street was the Phantom Gourmet Food Festival, and inside the Fenway Park Concourse was "college fest". Both events yielded a LOT of free stuff. It's almost like you start off going to college fest to check out the free promotions from the vendors, and then once you're a pompous young professional in Boston, you pay the $30 entrance fee to stuff yourself with free samples and listen to throwback jams with your old college friends at the bars on Landsdowne St.

At the end of the day, I had a great time tasting DELICIOUS local food. I went there having eaten nothing for the day, and I came out super full just from samples. Here's a list of the places I visited, and some pictures!

Harrow's Chicken Pies

KINGS pulled pork slider

Foundry Lobster roll slider

Hush Puppies corn and chorizo food festival

Uno Pizza

Boston Burger Company Cinnamon Sugar Sweet Potato Fries

Comella's Pasta

All Star Sandwich Bar BBQ Chicken Salad

Cakes by Erin "drunken pumpkin" cupcake

I was expecting a bit of a burger but their glazed sweet potato fries were delicious. I'd give my first born child for regular sweet potato fries so who knows what I would do for regular ones.

Beer tastes better in aluminum cans

"Drunken Pumpkin" cupcake. I think there was a pumpkin liquor in the frosting. The makes of these cupcakes are going to be on the next episode of "Halloween Wars"!

In the states, 21 years is the "golden age". Yes - the golden age where you can legally purchase alcohol if you drink. Many minors participate in underage drinking by begging those of age to purchase it for them, or getting using IDs to get into bars and purchase alcohol at stores. 

Me? Oh, never! How could I participate in such behavior?

Regardless of my past, the day in which my driver's license turns into a golden ticket to adulthood is fast-approaching. Naturally, I have many fantasy-like expectations of the night. I expect a delicious meal by the ocean in Marblehead, maybe lobster paired with a Cape Codder as my first legal drink, with my mother and a few close friends. Then, I buy a bottle of something easy to take shots of, maybe Fireball, to pregame, and bar hop around Salem with the girls trying local IPAs and getting in good with the bartenders. We'll be laughing all the way home in the Uber reliving the awesome night, and I'll go to work the next morning gabbing about all the fun I had.

I know it all won't go as planned like that, though. This is real life, not a glorified Sex and the City highlight reel.  

Group of friends expectation

Group of friends reality

Dinner expectation

Dinner reality

Pre-gaming expectation

Pre-gaming reality

Ubering downtown expectation

Ubering downtown reality

Making drunk friends expectation

Making drunk friends reality

Getting back safely expectation

Getting back safely reality

Work the next day expectation

Work the next day reality

In today's society, we focus on being perfect too much. We build ourselves up through the veil of Instagram feeds and Facebook statuses of achievements. It's important, however, to remind ourselves of the times we were literal human trash. Being human trash - I'm sure many of you are familiar with the concept - can consist of many things. It can consist of not getting out of bed until 5 PM only to answer the Thai delivery guy at the door. It can consist of taking an illegal U-Turn in the middle of rush hour. Sometimes we can't help but be literal garbage. Sometimes, you have to be at your boyfriend's soccer game at 2 PM and you forgot your condoms and teeth whitening strips at home. So, you naturally decide to haphazardly bang a U-Turn and drive exactly 9 miles above the speed limit, weaving through traffic of course, to get home. Why did you need condoms and teeth whitening strips? Because you're literal garbage.

giphy

1. Today, I walked out the "in" door at Stop-N-Shop and confused an old man just looking for some overpriced groceries.

2. This week, I stole a girl's sheet music in class and sent her into FULL crisis mode

3. This weekend, I heavily drank three nights in a row, and didn't get out of bed until 1 on both Saturday and Sunday

4. On Friday, I skipped chorus half because I was too hungover, and half because I was too embarrassed to face the girl who I stole music from 

5. The fact that I can name 4 times in the past 4 days, off the top of my head, shows that I'm literal garbage

6. Whenever I'm bored from doing homework or something productive, I find myself looking at my own Facebook page. This happens at least three times a day

7. I always pull out halfway in the road when taking a left turn. My boyfriend calls this the "typical Masshole move"

8.  Speaking of a "masshole move", not to mention all the times I've shifted lanes without really checking if there was a car behind me.

9. My friend was being chased by a scary clown, she tripped and fell out of her shoes and I laughed before I even knew that she was okay. 

10. Even though I worked in retail for years, I still don't put back all of the things I move in stores.

11. I'm almost banned at a local liquor store for bringing an underage person in.

12. Speaking of being almost banned, I used my broken student ID card at the gym for six months, and made the workers type in my number by hand every time, because I was too lazy to get a new one. I finally got a new one after they said I wasn't going to be allowed back if I didn't get a new one. Icing on the cake? I actually ended up losing the card at a bar the night before I got a new one. 

See? Deep down, we're all just literal garbage.

My pure skin has been tainted - it is not longer untouched. 

That's how my father would put this experience. Not me or my mother, however. While I was vacationing in Miami, my mother and I decided to get paw print tattoos in honor of our four-legged friend, Jackie.

Wouldn't you want her tattooed on you too? Isn't be the CYYOOOOOOOTEST?

We were planning on going another night, but the moment struck us. We googled, Yelped, and Foursqaured local Tattoo places until we decided on Empire Ink Tattoo.

 When we walked in, it was a slow Monday night. Thankfully, no one else was on the studio but us. The very friendly customer service representative got our information, helped us pick what style of paw print we want, and got our backstory. We told her all about Jackie, and how close we are as mother and daughter. She raved about the tattoo artist. I figured anyone with any mild knowledge of drawing and use of a tattoo gun could give me a simple paw print tattoo. I sure couldn't do it.

My mother went first, so I just sat and waited during hers since these tattoos probably took less than five minutes to do. The customer service representative and I bonded over her amazing lipstick and she shared with me that it's actually only available in two Urban Outfitters, one of them being in Miami. She invited me to try it. 

Now began my only trying time of this tattoo experience. I didn't really have a mirror, so I put on the lipstick, which is more like a lip stain because it is SO long-lasting. I got a little outside of my lip, so I asked to go to the bathroom. Turns out the bathroom was out of the shop and in a little hallway - shared by all of the businesses in the strip mall. There I was - trying to wash the semi-permanent lip stain off of my face in a muggy Miami bathroom with no soap and crappy paper towels. That experience was more painful than my tattoo.

The tattoo itself was sort and virtually painless. It only really tickled, I didn't feel much pain. It was more of an annoying pain that I only really felt when the needle was on my neck, This was because I got a small tattoo with no color, however. If I got a bigger one with color, it would have been a different story.

 

Since it was my first tattoo, and it was very small at that, I'm very happy with the experience. I would love to get another one soon!

On August 2nd, 2016, an earthquake of confusion shook from all Instagram users. When I opened the photo-sharing app, the top was scattered with little circles with glowing usernames of people I follow under them. I figured that this was the not-so-long anticipated "Instagram story" I had heard about yesterday.

Paxton Mittleman, friend, student, social media marketer extraordinaire 

Basically every story followed the same script, give or take a few words:

What am I supposed to do with this?

Hi Snapchat, uh, I mean Instagram

What IS THISSS?

Some people periled in the idea of another form of social media, questioning whether they have to do two stories now.  Most people, ended up going the self-promo route and plugged everyone to follow their snapchats.

But really... follow n_vergak on snapchat for self-deprecating humor

Some celebrities and brands are welcoming this with open arms, and I actually enjoyed their content. Some brands were even transparent with their dumbfounded-ness, and asked us what content we want to see on there. How interactive!

Instagram has become a feeder for jealousy, while Snapchat has become a feeder for intimacy. 

Snapchat and instagram obviously have their differences. Although Instagram technically did come first, it's been trying to be more and more like snapchat. Instagram added a "direct message" feature, where you can send images and text. Unlike Snapchat, however, it doesn't disappear immediately. 

Snapchat does miss the whole "uploading a picture to a feed and it staying there for forever - or at least until deleted", and the whole hashtag thing, but it does have its own benefits: temporariness, face-misshaping filters, and geofilters.

Te big difference between Instagram and Snapchat is the level of intimacy. Snapchat is where you can post unedited, raw content that not only takes minimal time to create (unless you're Shonduras, but you can reveal personal stories and antidotes that happen to you every day. Instagram has become known to pique people's jealousy, users scroll through questioning why their lives aren't as full of Brandy Melville dresses on Newport Beach, hikes at Yosemite, parties in SoHo, and so on like the people they follow. Instagram has become a feeder for jealousy, while Snapchat has become a feeder for intimacy. Maybe Instagram is onto something trying to be more intimate.

What team are you on? Snapchat - or Instagram? While you decide, here are my six takeaways from "Instagram stories".

1. Think about the dog accounts

Harlow and Sage and Marnie the dog are adorable in pictures. Imagine them in video now! You actually don't have to imagine anymore - the dream is a reality, and the still-life is now live action. It's basically like the account coming to life, and the second closest thing to actually holding the puppy in your hands.

                        

harlowandsage, marniethedog

2. You just gained 50 new Snapchat followers

Yes, everyone was using this to advertise their snapchats. Either that, or they resolved to just stick to the original 24-hour story app: Snapchat. If you're like any other social media user, however, you love getting new followers. Use this as an opportunity to grow your brand. Just what our egos need - more people following our every move on social media.

3. Another outlet for brands

I know that some people don't trust brands no matter how much they love their products or how transparent the brand is on social media. As a student of communications, however, I happen to always appreciate a brand's effort to explore social media territory. I can see how some are forced (I love a good  "Brands Saying Bae" Example), but I really appreciate it when it's done well. Social media is kinda my job, so I'm an optimist when it comes to new forms of social media. I'm excited to see how brands approach this.

4. You can reach an untapped audience in a more intimate way

I was scrolling through my "stories" feed, and I was seeing people I forgot I had even followed on Instagram (even some I'd like to forget).  Now, a whole other audience can see your daily life, and maybe bring them over to your snapchat for more. As a user, you can untap the intimate lives of people you forgot about on instagram.

5. Shaking the jealousy problem by tearing down the curtain

As stated before, this may be Instagram's way of being notorious for harvesting jealousy over filters and sushiritos. Now, we can see unfiltered, un-curated content from users that usually don't upload a picture unless the color follows a certain "instagram theme"

6. This could be fun

Think of how cross-platform this could be. Imagine a story that starts in snapchat and ends in instagram. You can drive followers to both accounts, and tell a multi-platform story.