![]() Listener donations hit $7.8 million in 2021, up 16% from the $6.7 million donated in 2020. Others are trying to get help for children with mental illness.Īs the stories come in, Richards plays songs like “ Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie, “ Stay Alive” by José González, “I am OK” by Lea Porcelain, “We are Fine” by Sharon Van Etten, and “This Year” by the Mountain Goats.Īlthough the station has been doing mental health–specific programming for years, not only was there an increase in listeners and donations after the start of the pandemic, but the number of hours that people were spending listening to the radio station also increased dramatically, said Dashel Schueler, KEXP’s marketing and communications director. They’re the adult survivors of child abuse. ![]() People share that they’re trying to stay sober. Others are specifically geared toward addiction, grief, and coping with cancer. This one is for people grappling with their mental health. It’s a Music Heals day, one of three to four such days the nonprofit radio station KEXP hosts every year as part of its programming that addresses these and other serious issues head on. Hundreds of messages flood in via text, email, and social media. They are darker than the day - deeply personal, emotional, and gut-wrenching accounts of their struggles with depression, anxiety, grief, and more. Rest easy.On a crisp, sunny day in Seattle, DJ John Richards is fielding music requests from listeners and also sharing their stories on air. AIM taught people to never stop being ourselves - no matter how great or terrible their personalities - and most importantly, to never stop posting.Īd astra, AOL Instant Messenger. That ethos lives on in every nook and cranny of the internet, inspiring all the greatest takes of our time. ![]() But at the very least, AIM emboldened an entire generation to be extremely themselves online, for better of worse. Looking back on AIM’s heyday, it’s easy to feel enraptured with embarrassment, probably because we were all deeply embarrassing human beings. And we all set ourselves to ‘Away’ to look cool and busy even though we were still online stalking our crushes.” My profile had Toby McGuire’s “This is my gift, my curse” speech from ‘Spider-Man’ and my pre-set away messages were almost always Alkaline Trio lyrics (‘Stupid Kid,’ ‘Armageddon,’ ‘Mercy Me,’ the most early ‘00s emo songs of all time”). I also got to embrace my ‘emo’ identity whenever I felt emotional, which was all the time. “We got to be weird and irreverent, or so what we thought weird and irreverent was at 13. “AIM is in many ways a predecessor to how I behave online today, even as an adult,” Inverse’s pop culture writer Eric Francisco says. Those years of incessant, indefatigable angst were part of what made AIM special for so many of us. For this reason, an entire generation memorized the lyrics to Something Corporate songs - including the Ulysses-length classic, “My Konstantine” - purely for the purpose of AIM away messages. It inspired users to channel their adolescent thirst into carefully-crafted away messages in the hopes that some wandering voyeur on the buddy list would notice. It was the canvas on which we painted with our incredibly misguided melodrama, fueled by energy drinks and ennui at times, it was a much-needed respite from a world seemingly on fire.ĪIM gave us a sense of “community” before that became new media buzzword. Whether Slack wants to admit it or not, AIM will always be its emo grandparent, kicking and screaming into the void.īut for those who came of age in the early-to-mid 2000s, AOL Instant Messenger was more than some way to talk to our friends after school or work. Still, these communication tools and more - including, arguably, Twitter - wouldn’t be where they are today without their quirky and clunky progenitor. Services like Slack, Hipchat, and more are basically AIM but optimized for capitalist ideas of efficiency rather than hormonally charged away messages. In a crowded market of messaging services, AOL has struggled to maintain relevancy. We’re more excited than ever to focus on building the next generation of iconic brands and life-changing products.” “Our focus will always be on providing the kind of innovative experiences consumers want. “We know there are so many loyal fans who have used AIM for decades, and we loved working and building the first chat app of its kind since 1997,” AOL writes on its help page. On Friday, AOL’s iconic messaging service, AIM, shuts down for good. After 20 years, the sun has finally set on the messaging app that groomed an entire generation of extremely online semi-adults.
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