You Know You're Addicted To AOL When . . .
- Tech Support calls "You" for help.
- Someone at work tells you a joke and you say LOL. (I've actually spoken
with people who have done this.)
- You watch T.V. with the closed captioning turned on.
- You have called out someone's screen name while making love to your
significant other.
- You keep begging your friends to get an account so "we can hang out".
- Three words: Carpal tunnel syndrome.
- You want to meet a girl/guy and your first impulse is to turn on your
computer.
- you've ever gotten onto an airplane just to meet some folks face to face.
- you have to get a second phone line just so you can call Domino's.
- you go into labor and you stop to type a special e-mail letting everyone
know you are going to be away.
- you have a vanity car tag with your screen name on it.
- you no longer type with proper punctuation, capitalization, or complete
sentences.
- you have met over 100 AOLers.
- you begin to say heh heh heh instead of laughing.
- when someone says "What did you say?" you reply "Scroll up!".
- you find yourself sneaking away to the computer in the middle of the night
when your spouse is asleep.
- you turn down the lights and close the blinds so people won't know you are
on-line again.
- you know more about your AOL friends daily routines than you do your own
spouses.
- you find yourself lying to others about your time on-line and when they
complain that your phone was busy you claim it was off the hook.
- you have an identity crisis if someone else is using an s/n close to your
own.
- you would rather tell people your bloodshot eyes are from partying too
much instead of the truth (all night on-line).
- you change s/n's so much that you have to get your profile to see who you
are.
- your kids are standing at your side saying "mommy, please come cook
dinner" and you would rather type another "LOL".
- you marry your cyberboyfriend and you both sit at your own computers and
chat to each other every night from across the room.
- you type messages to people while you are on the phone with them at the
same time.
- you won't work at a job that doesn't have a modem involved.
- your dog leaves you.
- you have to ask what year it is.
- you are doing things more and more that you swore you would never, ever do
when you first found chat.
- you write a letter like this:
"dear tom, hiyas! how r u doin well i
gotta go bbl!".
- you name your pets after people you talk to.
- you smile sideways.
- you sign on and immediately get 10 messages from people who have you on
their buddy lists.
- you have a map on the wall with red thumbtacks to mark where people you
have met are.
- you look at an annoying person off-line and wish you had your ignore
button handy.
- you bring a bag lunch and a cooler to the puter.
- your significant other kisses your neck while you are chating and you
think "uh oh cyber sex pervo".
- you have withdrawls if you are away from the puter for more than a few
hours.
- you use AOL lingo in everyday life (if you still have one
- hehehe).
- you take a speed reading course to keep up with the scrolling.
- your buddy list has over 100 people on it.
- your worst comeback to a bully is "I'll slap you with a rubber chicken.".
- you wake up in the morning and the first thing you do is get on-line
before you have your first cup of coffee.
- you have to inject no-doze into your butt to keep it awake.
- you have your puter set up so that it goes directly into AOL's welcome
screen.
- you wait 6 hours online for a certain "special" person to come home from
work.
- you don't know where the time has gone.
- you end sentences with three (or more) periods while writing letters in
pen/pencil.
- your relationship online has gone farther than any real one you have had.
- you get up at 2am to go the bathroom but go turn on your computer instead.
- you don't even notice anymore when someone has a typo.
- when you enter a room and 23 people greet you with {{{Hugs}}} or
***Kisses***
- you stop typing whole words and use things like ppl, dunno and lemme.
- your voicemail/answering machine message is "BRB, leave your s/n and I
will TTYL".
- you type faster than you think.
- you got your psychiatrist addicted on AOL too and are now undergoing
therapy in private rooms instead of at his office.
- you want to be buried with your computer when it dies
- or vice versa.
- you actually enjoy the fact that you are addicted.
- you can actually read and follow all the names of the cast that scrolls up
your tv-screen at the end of a movie.
- people say, if it weren't for your super reflexes in your eyes and
fingers, you would have long been classified as a vegetable.
- you dream in text.
- being called a newbie is a *MAJOR* insult.
- there is absolutely no interesting chat any room and you are really
bored
- yet you don't want to leave in case you miss something.
- you double click your tv remote.
- you can now type over 70 wpm.
- you think about starting a 12 step recovery group for AOL junkies.
- you are on the phone for a minute and need to do something else you say
"BRB" or "BBL".
- you check your e-mail and forget you have real mail aka snail mail.
- you go into withdrawls during dinner.
- you spend at least 30 minutes making sure you say goodbye to everyone in a
room.
- you stop speaking in full sentences.
- you have gone into an unstaffed tech support room and ended up "giving"
tech support to other AOLers.
- you have to be pryed from your computer with the Jaws-of-Life.
- your last sexual experience was really just a "textual" experience.
- You know what a "snert" is.
- you set your kitchen on fire while cooking dinner because you wanted to
"check your mail" and while you were there you "just wanted to see who's on".
- you meet people from AOL in public and have no idea what their real name
is, so you call them by their s/n (OR VICE VERSA! ;-))
Submitted By: Chris Tougias
Feb 19, 1997 03:49