Let's hope you're on the dot about it, and thank you for sharing your view (kind of put me at ease). (_8^(l)< homer, from the america online times l, when they actually had smilies for new people to familiarize themselves
It was available in the program AOL (america online). Back then before AOL instant messenger, it was an internet service provider, as people used their software to connect online through dialup, chatrooms were plenty, people wrote punters (used HTML code to freeze, lag, crash the AOL client). Good days, but it was too limiting, and I started to learn about the internet after they got rid of me and I got a real ISP - internet service provider
I'm so old I remember using ICQ, which I believe AOL bought and turned into AOL instant messenger. ICQ was like magic back then.