Tuesday, January 22, 2013
goodbye, MSN
So I gather most people should know by now that MSN will be obliterated with effect from March 15 (users from China will still be able to use it I don't know why hahaha), and all users are encouraged to migrate to Skype, if they haven't already. I feel strangely affected, like part of my childhood and a major part of adolescence is being destroyed.
I love MSN so much, I kept all my chat logs. Now that I'm using a Mac (used to own a Sony VAIO), I transferred all my files over, and among these files were my chat logs. I'd always known I wanted to keep them because... I am just nostalgic like that. Strangely my chat logs only go as far back as November 2008 – I later realized this was the month I'd gotten my laptop. The rest of my chat logs are in the desktop I'd been using before getting my laptop, and this desktop no longer exists lol.
I randomly opened a chat log and just burst out laughing.
And this is why I like to keep things like these. I'm sure everyone all had esoteric language and inside jokes in their schools. For a period in time everyone in my school used "displeasing" and "disturbing", I know it doesn't sound funny now that I'm typing it but trust me, it was so cool back then and we all laughed when someone used it. If you were there you would have laughed too. And looking at this chat log now, I cannot believe I actually forgot we used the term "yao nie" to scold someone HAHAHAHAHA.
I used to talk on MSN for hours on end. I started when I was in P4 (didn't use it actively), and then from P5 or P6 I started using it a lot and never looked back. It's funny cos people (at least those from Fuhua???) don't think I'm a shy person, but really I just made my way through MSN. Because it is so much easier to hide behind a computer screen. I spoke to people online and got to know them better, and then when I felt closer to them it got easier to talk to them in person. Soon I grew to have enough confidence, and realized that sometimes not even MSN can salvage awkward conversations with people when you've just met them... So you have to just put yourself out there and be more proactive.
But I digress. Certainly, everyone loved talking on MSN. That was before Facebook and Twitter came in and ruined things. Because before then, MSN was the only possible avenue to talk to your friends for as long as you want, and for free.
Remember the days of limited SMS? Where you'd have to pay 5 cents for each message that exceeds your 500- or 1000-message (depending on your phone plan) limit? I knew it very well because I had suffered from sending out too many texts, and just shortly before unlimited texting was introduced I had just renewed my plan. WHICH MEANS I WAS STUCK WITH A 500-A-MONTH TEXT LIMIT WHEN EVERYONE ELSE HAD ALREADY MIGRATED TO UNLIMITED TEXTING (or Wifi, for the more advanced ones).
Look, it's my Sony Ericsson z610i! My very first phone. And an ahlian cap behind wtf.
I actually really miss phones with buttons as keyboards. Will they ever come back? And no, I do not want to use a Blackberry.
Among many of my fondest memories of secondary school life, some in particular stand out more than the others, and plenty of them were facilitated by MSN. Hours whizzed by as I talked to Darryl and Kelila, laughing about Mr Phor and other school gossip. I maintained friendships with many people I didn't get to see often – all because of MSN. It was also where I exchanged songs with many people ("Eh send me some songs"), and got to know so many good ones cos Darren Toh had sent them to me.
It's not just all the happy things. MSN was the cause of many of my parents' admonishments – "Why are you spending so much time on the computer?!" I got dumped over MSN, and cried in front my laptop with the incriminating MSN chat window open in front of me. And continued to cry in front of my laptop throughout the months I spoke to my friends on MSN, sometimes trying to conceal my sadness, sometimes trying to work through it.
Had it not been for my friends, I probably would have taken longer than I did to get over it. And had it not been for MSN, I probably would be a lot less wiser, I probably would have missed out on many life-changing conversations.
Texting and Twitter are just not the same, because in MSN everything is instantaneous, you see messages getting bumped up on screen in real time, and it makes it feel as if the conversation IS happening right in front of you in real time. Facebook Messenger doesn't compare, because it's just a small box at the corner of the window and Facebook's reason for existence is not solely for conversation, the way MSN is.
I loved MSN so much. Even as 'O' Levels started rolling by and people abstained from going online, much less go online on MSN; as Facebook creeped in and undergirded its deep presence in our lives and people jumped ship to Facebook Messaging; as Twitter got popular and people started tweeting incessantly; as people migrated to Skype because of the free voice call function... I never budged. I stayed on MSN. And sadly, it got boring because hardly anyone went on MSN any more to talk.
"Sign up on Twitter! It's the newest thing!"
"Just Facebook message me!"
I stayed put on MSN. But soon, I couldn't NOT Skype actively anymore. It was necessary for projects in poly, and it was what everyone used. "Just for pragmatic reasons, I'll use Skype," I told myself. But MSN was soon forgotten.
We all know that we now live in an age of speed. Messages are short, just make your point and go, I'm so busy oh God I have so many things to do. I honestly wonder... WHO would bother to read the whole of this blog post without skimming? If you did, I applaud you, you're either very patient or I'm just extremely riveting (:-P heh).
That being said, when was the last time you sat down and talked to someone, committing all your attention to the conversation? Without stopping halfway to check your Twitter feed? Or without stopping to reply to a Whatsapp message that probably isn't even as important as the conversation going on in person? I'm guilty: I haven't had a proper conversation in months. At least not one where I'm totally deep and into it.
I guess I just miss, and appreciate a conversation where people are actually paying complete attention to one another, because these conversations don't come by as easily or often anymore. For me I just kinda realized that they started disappearing as MSN got less popular. But maybe that's just me.
In any case, goodbye, MSN. You will be dearly missed.
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