On December 15, 2017, AIM officially died. When Verizon acquired AOL in 2015, it discontinued the AOL Instant Messenger service two years later after users moved on to other things like texting, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.

Five months later, we’re still in mourning. While it’s true that practically no one used it anymore during its dramatic decline, it will remain the iconic messaging and chat platform of the late 1990s and early aughts. 

As such, its death was a particular blow to the hearts of US twenty- and thirtysomethings everywhere who spent their nights chatting away on the application.

Now Playing: Watch this: Logging off AIM: Our fondest AIM memories

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Some of CNET’s editors already shared their favorite AIM memories here, but check out the recent video where we wax nostalgic about our embarrassing screen names, passive aggressive away messages and carefully curated profiles.  

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