got home & got on AIM
first thing AIM that’s
Instant Messenger which was
as important back then
as any social media shit today
flirting with girls on AIM
composing the perfect
away message
blah blah blah hoping I have
lots of responses when I return
Kanye West was woke as hell
Kanye said “George Bush
doesn’t care about Black
people” & was
the liberal darling
(deadass he was like what Kendrick is today)
did it on some news show
with that one actor there
that guy who played
Austin Powers
this was during
the New Orleans flood
Katrina
Counter-Strike
one of the hottest games
remarkably still one of the most popular games
today like 20 years later
MySpace was everything
MySpace top 8 who you
associate with who you’re
cliqued up with
putting your music up on MySpace
nothing better
or worse
for music than MySpace
red red site
that you decorate yourself
(hi Tom)
personalizing
your page learning HTML
Justin Timberlake
owned pop music
untouchable
& T.I. it looked like
he was gonna be
an all-time artist
a goat in any genre 🐐
T-Mobile released the Sidekick
& that was so tactile
flip it open
jump on AIM right there
right on your phone
super tactile
better than the iPhone
which hadn’t come out yet
it wasn’t even the age of screens full swing
no idea what was coming
iPhone
would destroy that Sidekick
crushed
smartphones ruined hand-touch
done
I wasn’t on movies
was fully on music
but Christopher Nolan dropped
Batman Begins &
scrambled all our batty brains
& then he’d go on
to do it again even more with
the sequel with Heath
Ledger back when Ledger
was still alive
Taylor Napolsky’s work has appeared in Hobart Pulp, Dream Boy Book Club, Maudlin House, Misery Tourism, Do Not Submit, and Charm School. He serves as an editor at Bizarre Publishing House.