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Today, America Online Instant Messenger, better known by its acronym, AIM, went dark after more than two decades of faithful service.

Those of us who came of age in the 1990s and early 2000s fondly remember the halcyon days of chat rooms, lolspeak, and away messages. We know that, while some of the Ars audience were 1337 sysops on IRC channels, for a lot of us, AIM was the primary way to connect with our friends online across town and around the globe.

We asked readers on Twitter: would you share your AIM memories with us? Just a few sentences of what you remember most, what you got out of it, what, if anything, it taught you? The responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.