So AOL still exists. I went to the website and as a free download got the AOL Desktop. For the most part, it's a ghost town. However.... there are still chat rooms that do exist, that people use. The only problem is that all of those people know each other, and are always having some kind of "inside joke" discussions, so it feels like you can never add to the conversation. ****Note: This may have changed, because I can no longer find a download for AOL Desktop. I did see something about AOL Desktop Gold, it's $6.99 a month, but I think AOL is discontinuing that. So any AOL chat rooms that are left, might be gone.****
And when you feel like it's the right time to jump in with a Hi, or you make an off the cuff comment, you're either ignored by everyone, or you might get a friendly response. But these people in the chat rooms makes it feel like they've known one another for years. So you really feel like you're intruding and shouldn't be there. This might only be 2 or 3 chat rooms that have a good number of people.
The rest of the chat rooms? All zero. So for example, you might see this list of chat rooms:
(53) Pittsburgh
(44) Columbus
(11) Phoenix
(3) Las Vegas
(0) Miami
(0) Sioux Falls
(0) New York
(0) Chicago
(0) Los Angeles
And so on and so forth. It's pretty much dead other than a couple of chat rooms that have people in, but those chat rooms are full of people who seem to know each other. Whether it's from chatting for years, but some people talk as if they live in the same areas as well, so it's hard to tell. I used to chat on AOL and then after chatting for a while would meet them in person. That was mid 1990's.
