Mr MSN Messenger

Lets take it back to 2001, where army cargos and hoodies reigned supreme and the best way of chatting up your crush was getting her email from mIRC and adding her on the beloved MSN Messenger. We entered the world of online communication as jagged cut-outs of adolescent boners and attempted to smooth the edges via emoticons and desperately timed nudges. This is the story of the MSN generation.

Young Aquinas boy Ben signs up to MSN on a fateful spring morning, “Nookie_Bizkit69@hotmail.com”. He uses the profile name of Benny and ponders what his personalised message ought to be. “Onnne SteeeepPPpp CloseeerRrRrr to Tha EdddgeEEeE, IM bout to BREAK :P”. Bravo Ben, now every girl at Santa Maria will know that you love Linkin Park and are a complete seething ball of puberty and wank tissues. He gets to work adding his group at school (not the cool group, but the kids who still had their own parties) and all the Santa Maria girls who formed the off-shoots and leftovers of the main corpse of certified babes.

Ben sits on his family computer while contemplating his 7th wank for the day. It’s a Saturday morning and he sees his current crush log on, “Sara_Pie86@hotmail.com” aka “Sarz :)”. Ben stares at green icon of Sarz on the MSN friends list for 10 minutes while mentally battling his own urge to initiate conversation with her. Nah, play it cool Ben, switch your status to “offline” and then “online” to attract her attention. Ben does just that and waits a further 10 minutes before cracking under the pressures of excessive-wanking angst and sending the first message: “Hi babe lol x”.

It’s been 1 minute and 42 seconds and Sarz hasn’t responded to his message. In the interest of playing it cool, he nudges. The chat window shakes like the foundations of his own pick-up artistry. FINALLY, “Sarz is typing a message…” OK, Ben is getting anxious, she has been “typing a message” for about 2 minutes and 53 seconds. For the love of teenage desperation, just hit enter girl! Suddenly, it goes blank. Sarz is no longer typing a message and Nookie_Bizkit is left totally negged and unsatisfied.

Poor Ben spends the next 5 hours wanking while staring at his beloved crush’s contact which has been set to “away” for the last 4 hours. Day becomes night, and Ben flicks through the sordid filth that makes up his received files folder. A sort of Star Wars cantina of bad party photos, rookie porn and basically any other photo that Ben would otherwise be horrified if his poor mother was to take a gander at. A truly impressive collection of filth.

It now 3am and he stares at the same list of weirdos that never seem to log off. Contacts he’d never consider initiating contact with, really just filler for his contact list. Which during your high school year is more important than the size of your still growing shlong.

Finally, a message from Sarz on Sunday night, “could you ask Pete if he’d be keen to go to my dinner dance?” Ben smashes his keyboard and walks away. What a fucking disaster.