Hey guys! I’ve viewed these forums regularly over the last few months while making a long form YouTube documentary about Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, and AOL/AIM’s glory days, titled “A/S/L- How we used to do on the internet in the days of AOL, AIM, and Yahoo Messenger”, and I now I need your help.
The documentary is focused on the beginnings of online dating, the evolution of how we interact online, the fun of hitting the chats late night for a little fun before smart phones and social media, and the history of Yahoo/MSN Messenger/AOL/AIM. Its my love letter to one of the most memorable portions of my life during my pre-teen to teen years.
The quality of this doc isn’t your typical YouTube video. I’ve put unreal amounts of time, money and production value into this. I’ve been working on it for years on and off, and finally, I’m almost done… but I’m missing several key things in the form of screenshots and screen recordings, mainly on the chat side of things. Thanks to Escargot and The Phoenix Project, I’ve been able to recreate all messaging examples, however, anything chat related, I’m running very thin.
Screenshots and Screen Recordings Examples that I’m looking for-
I have very little video of actual 98’-2002’ish Yahoo and MSN chats, period.
Examples of how annoying chats could get, with people screaming through a microphone or typing the same thing over and over in obnoxious font.
A/S/L’s with replies in user replies, in chat.
Yahoo and MSN chat icons that would appear in the user list when someone went on webcam, or was private. (Video, I have plenty of pics, although mostly low res.)
Examples of random “clean” chats “going dirty”.
A picture of the Yahoo, or MSN adult chat room lobbies.
Someone trying to connect to another user’s webcam while in chat (or actually connecting).
I know some of you have tried to implement Yahoo and MSN chat into Escargot, so I don’t know if there is anyway to easily recreate some of these situations without having to Photoshop all of it. I also have a feeling some of you have screenshots and video the rest of the world wouldn’t. If any of you can help me in tracking down ANY of these things, I’d be forever grateful, and of course would credit anyone that pitched in!
Thank you guys all so much! How should we all handle discussing this? Discord? Email? You have no idea how invaluable this stuff is to me. My Discord link is BL33DN3ON#8877 is you want to message me there. The more, the better. No one wants to listen to me talk for 40-50 minutes straight.
Haha! My girlfriend speaks Portuguese, and is forcing me to learn, so maybe they could help there as well. I could always translate them. I have a section about the demise of instant messaging they could fit in.
Grumpz does not use Discord (well he actually does, but it’s for real life friends from what i’ve heard).
I’ve only been able to reach him on Blockland Glass/RTB4v21 lately, note that both require a paid game. He does say he’s on Wire, but I barely got any reply from him recently on that platform.
Though I’ve been additionally able to reach him on Telegram, so that works.
Thank you! I feel like I’m on a crazy adventure for this video, trying to track down the last remnants I can. Of course having to hunt down the last remaining people that could possibly help me would be part of the process
I tried finding you, but the Discord handle you provided doesn’t have the hash number after it. It would look something like @MitchellStudios#0000 , but with different numbers.
