Ned Hardy
Get Smarter Everyday
Let me take you back to a time when the only thing that mattered was recess, and the single greatest existential crisis was losing your best slammer.
Yes, I’m talking about POGs. Those little cardboard discs that somehow captured the spirit of an entire generation while simultaneously being utterly useless.
AOL Instant Messenger wasn’t just a chat platform—it was a cultural phenomenon, a digital confessional, and a passive-aggressive battlefield. If you had an AIM account in the late 90s or early 2000s, your away message wasn’t just a utilitarian update on your whereabouts. It was a declaration of identity, a cryptic plea for attention, and sometimes, an emotional landmine that detonated silently in the background of your social circle.