Tech throwback: Weird things we used to do with MSN Messenger

SINGAPORE — Hands up those who remember the days you used to rush home from school to go online and chat with the friends you literally just said bye to.

You’re definitely not millenials.

These days, people chat via WhatsApp or SnapChat (what’s SMS?). But a mere decade ago, MSN Messenger ruled our social lives. From the classic emoticons to the compulsive behaviour we all exhibited online at some point or other, there’s a lot we loved about that old messaging client.

You could say that MSN Messenger is responsible for the way we chat today. Sure, not all of it is pretty. But we still did it anyway. Because, well, just because.

TYPING OUT EVERYTHING LYK DIS

Or just making all our texts as unreadable as possible. Till this day, we’ll never understand what on earth possessed us to think that spamming the shift key alternately while typing was a good idea, and yet all the cool kids were doing it. Not only is text like that a nightmare on the eyeballs, it’s also horribly inefficient — it takes a good 50 seconds just to type a line.

SIGNING IN AND OUT TO GET SOMEONE’S ATTENTION

Your crush just came online and you’re dying to talk to him or her but you can’t just say “hi” like a normal, well-adjusted human being because that would be social suicide. Signing in and out would have sent a pop-up notification to your entire contacts list, alerting said crush of your presence. Then the waiting game would begin as you tried to play it cool but really you were just staring intently at the screen and praying for that message screen to pop up. And you wonder why you still have compulsive tendencies today.

SPAMMING ABBREVIATIIONS

Who even needed grammar or actual words when everything back then could be summed up in “lol”? Not to mention “brb”, “gtg”, “lmfao”, “afk”, “rofl”, “omg”, etc ... And the fact that some of these abbreviations have survived the ages and become part of our daily lexicons, is a testament to the glory days of MSN.

CHANGING YOUR STATUS TO SONG LYRICS

This was the one place you could show the world (read: your contacts list) what a poetically deep and tortured soul you were. But much more than song lyrics, the status bar was a reflection of your innermost thoughts and feelings, or at least a carefully constructed version of them. Also, this was probably around the same time emo music enjoyed unrivalled popularity. Coincidence?

BEING ABLE TO SEE WHEN SOMEONE IS TYPING SOMETHING ...

This is where anxiety in the modern world first originated. Whether we were in the midst of an argument or dishing the latest gossip, everything in our young lives hung in the balance with those three powerful little words, “Contact is typing ...”. Till this day, nothing comes close to that rush of excitement from being able to see when someone was typing a message, especially if that person was someone we fancied.

... AND THE HORROR WHEN THAT “TYPING” MESSAGE NEVER ARRIVES

Of course on the flip side, you got jerks who typed forever and never hit send. All of that mounting tension and anticipation that led to a dead end was a huge downer. These days, we’d probably just ask them what the hell they were going to say, but back then, we’d have changed our status to something passive aggressive and cried ourselves to sleep.

APPEARING OFFLINE

Of everything on this list, this is probably the feature we miss the most. There were multiple uses for appearing offline — primarily to make hasty exits from awkward conversations we weren’t too keen on having. And the best part was still being able to continue chatting with our BFFs covertly without being bothered by randoms. Or maybe we were just creepers. Whatever, gtg, ttyl. Or not.

PLAYING GAMES WHILE CHATTING

Yes, there was MSN games. The most intense gaming you’ve ever done in your life probably took place over MSN. Whether it was Minesweeper, Hexic or Tic Tac Toe, we could use the games to do everything from settle disputes to kill boredom. And there was probably a lot of boredom when most of your chats consisted of “hey” and “lol”.

USING WAY TOO MANY EMOTICONS

Back when they were still called emoticons, of course. The original MSN ones still are absolute classics. We can even remember all the shortcuts for these babies, from the (h) for sunglasses dude, to the (r) for the rainbow. True, we sometimes still wonder why a sheep emoticon was thought to be so integral to the chatting experience as to be included in the original line-up. Nonetheless, we spammed that (bah) emoticon every chance we got.

NUDGE, NUDGE

If you thought the Facebook “poke” was annoying, you have never used the MSN “nudge”. Nudging didn’t just give the other person a gentle ping or notification — it pretty much sent their entire screen into earthquake mode. If your friend hadn’t replied your message in five seconds, you were licensed to nudge the heck out of them. If only we could still do this today on Whatsapp when we get two blue ticks and no reply.