03
99
03
32
99
19
16
CC
16
Not trying to brag, but I was on America Online almost right away. My dad worked for The Wiz at the time (nobody beats them, you know), and finagled a returned / damaged Windows 95 desktop for free, and AOL was offering 30, no 60, no 100 hours for free, so why not? It was fascinating and new, a fragile wilderness seemingly traversed only by teenagers or adults sorely in need of real things to worry about. One of my friends lived in an identical house half an acre away got online at roughly the same time. We were hooked.

Hooked on fucking with people, of course. I mean, what else is there to do, when you search AOL’s profiles by your town and the same seventeen results keep appearing? This newfound anonymity was thrilling and perverse; we no longer had to run around outside to TP someone’s house, we could simply send them a confusing and rude instant message from the comfort of our bedrooms.

It wasn’t long until I changed my profile to read as though I was not myself but in fact Jonathan Taylor Thomas, who at that point was riding high on his Home Improvement fame. Filled in a few fake hobbies, a fake location, and a fake birthday and boom, people were suddenly writing me out of the blue, wondering if it was really me (him)! Some believed instantly; others wanted me to prove my identity by verifying certain bits of personal information, interrogations of which I had varying success. Those conversations were often the most entertaining, anyway. If anything was learned, it was that through this new digital age, I could be whoever I wanted to be at any given moment, and it was a thrilling realization.

Matt Korvette is a vocalist and pediatrician residing in Philadelphia, PA.