AOL Users and Surfing Drunk
Saturday, January 06, 2007
AOL customers, often lay at the mercy of the ridiculing internet users at large - at least back in the mid to late 90's. People making fun of the AOL user was funny at first. But then it seemed to have gotten old - at least for me and many of my friends.
A new trend had begun developing - a true concern for the emotional and mental status of the average AOL user. Moderating our low traffic email list, we'd often have several AOL members [yes, they were always AOL members] emailing to the list to cancel their email subscription, "TAKE ME OFF THIS LIST YOU BASTARD!" or "QUIT EMAILING ME! I DON'T KNOW U!" Nevermind that the link at the bottom had in big shiny words: "UNSUBSCRIBE" and of course, along with the link to email to UNSUBSCRIBE.
Another instance of troubling AOL status on this same list would be the weekly email to every member, "WHAT IS THIS? WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME THIS?" or "WHO R U?" from different members. So one of the moderators would email back [to the entire list] and relate in a diplomatic fashion how it was that one day they signed up for this list. Often, one of the moderators would go far beyond duty and would pull the date she signed up and slowly explain that she had to have signed up because our list server requires it AND confirmation.
Here were other experiences of AOL members as reported by various sources - in my dealings with troubling AOL customer service, AOL users, and AOL Tech Support, as well as people who contacted me with their problems and concerns over AOL. AOL users would think or do any of the following:
- Think their screenname was their email address.
- Think that AOL was the internet.
- Find it acceptable that AOL itself would inundate them with ads.
- Have a hard time cancelling AOL in the first place.
- Getting billed even when they had cancelled AOL.
- Double billing while stile on AOL.
- Sluggish computers that were fine pre-installation of AOL.
- Double and sometimes triple installations of AOL [one the same machine].
- AOL Tech's stand-by advice of checking the modem strings.
- AOL Tech's thinking they were techs in the first place.
Yes, it was a wonder that AOL users got around at all. I wonder if it's still the same in 2007. Here's a page that has some anecdotes of life with AOL. http://www.thehumorarchives.com/joke/Diary_of_an_AOL_user
Okay. Are these true instances of various AOL users? I think one would have to have had first hand experience in dealing with the AOL user community in order to believe that those stories are true to life - at least in theory. Let me go on and share my own true experiences and those of the people around me. For interesting instances with AOL Tech Support [sic] just point your browser here: http://www.aol-icq.net/old_archives/aoltech.html.
In my opinion, AOL served no one by making it easy for people to "plug and surf" and we have to face it that Darwan's whole theory of evolution was swiped clean with the arrival of AOL's popularity onto the scene. We have to first acknowledge that no, not everyone deserves or even should be on the internet.
Entire intranets have been destroyed due to the careless downloads of the person who thinks he is an administrator because he operates from the server but didn't have the where-with-all to make daily back-ups. I have cleaned up home systems that have had over 6000 variations of trojans, viruses, and worms [and AOL]. I have gone to extreme measures to protect these systems from the careless operation of the owners of these systems but it always seemed that when AOL was involved, if they decided to remain with AOL, often it was a waste of time.
If one cannot figure out how to get on the internet without AOL, perhaps one should not be on the internet. After all, AOL doesn't care if you're dumbed-down to the internet. It was always their job to inundate you with enough marketing that they would get fat off your wallet. AOL with a bottlenecking of the internet, it's 7:30pm on a Friday night and you can't get to your favorite www.aol-icq.net domain? Oh ghastly!
Next thing you know, people will no longer need a license to drive drunk.
Technorati: aol, noobs, newbies, AOL members, antiaol, anti-aol, ISP, aol sux, aol sucks, internet license, online, offline, aolicq, internet, surfing drunk, internet surfing
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3 Comments:
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At 10:52 PM,
said...
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Most people blame AOL for the ghastly stupidity you find on the Web these days. Their lack of education, technical knowledge -- even grammer and spelling skills -- are attributed to the fact that AOL makes it easy for *anyone* to get on the Internet, so they all did.
I used to have AOL. I only used it for a few months, and it wasn't my first ISP, either, so no one can say I fall into the category of "Anyone who's ever used AOL must be an idiot." I take that personally because hell, I just messed around with their service for a while on a free trial, hated it, and had such a hard time cancelling it I was inspired to write about my experiences. To this day I really hate AOL.
It's hard to disagree that the majority of AOL users really are stupid, but that's AOL's fault, for attracting such a low level of intelligence and tech savvy to their service in the first place, then making them rely on uncaring and inadequate call center staff for everything they need. -
At 5:41 AM,
the editor said...
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A kindred spirit.
I've read your journal regarding AOL and commend your dissemination of it. I wondered when I read it, however, how long it would take for the AOL Goons to threaten you. Bah.
As long as you don't do anything foolish like go get a .com/.net/.org with the three letters 'a,''l', and 'o' in the name and in a particular order I am hopeful you may be fine.
However, should you want to attempt this, you have my support and I would be glad to help you in any way that I could. -
At 4:09 PM,
said...
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Well, thanks for your offer to help. I'll be glad to help you in return since we are "kindred spirits." I'll join your network if you want, maybe you could guest blog on my site and vice versa?
AOL hasn't sued me yet even though I own an unflattering domain name that points to my site: antiaohell.com. I chose the name because I'm against the HELL that AOL members go through to cancel, and to uninstall their horrible software, and to resolve their (over)billing issues.
I know AOL reads my blog because Jason Calacanis (former GM/Netscape, owned by AOL) told me if he ran the company he'd have me work there as an "indie voice" to help them improve, but other than that, no one who works for them has said too much. Yet.
You can email me at marahm @ earthlink dot net--
New!
July 13 2006
This site and blog are not necessarily against AOL. It's a critique of some of the methods AOL uses or some may say abuses toward it's customers and/or the internet at large.
Visiting Dear AOL, for example, will reveal a petition that some are signing in order to stop AOL from sending allowed spam to your AOL email-box.
Are you being threatened with trademark infringement? Have you been ordered to transfer your domain name over? Here are some resources:
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Chilling Effects Clearinghouse
About This Blog
This blog was formed after AOL™ or America Online ™ - an online service provider - sent a threatening notice to the Registrar of the domain name www.aol-icq.net telling them to transfer it to AOL. The notice made assertions of copyright infringement of the name and even went so far as to assert their ownership of the once non-AOL controlled name ICQ™. At first blush, this may seem not so unreasonable. However. The former owner of www.aol-icq.com, acquired circa 1998 for the purpose of helping AOL members use ICQ while on AOL, is the same owner of www.aol-icq.net, which was acquired in 2002 when an accidental missing of the deadline left it open for AOL to register it.
Therefore, does this latest AOL threat sound like Reverse Domain Name Hijacking?
