  So I had a frustrating experience with a friend this week. This builds off my last post. Nothing too deep, just some thoughts I have been struggling with: On AOL Instant Messenger, I tend to leave pretty zany away messages. As I see it, having a profile and an away message up most of every day is a convenient, powerful way to communicate with friends. I know a lot of people leave messages like "At class" or "I'm not at the computer right now" but I've always felt compelled to take advantage of that very visible digital real estate (I know all my friends are checking my away messages). Anyway, so Tuesday night I had a very elaborate and long analysis of a bootlegged Mogwai song that I had just downloaded.
The song had really blown me away on Monday night, and that experience was the most immediate thing I wanted to communicate to my friends that day. But a friend later criticized the message as "overblown" and stated that all away messages should be less than two lines. So here is the question: clearly, most people treat AIM as a basic communication medium, but that's about it. Is it foolish to hope that people would engage the medium more creatively? If we're all checking away messagess anyway, it just seems like a waste to not take advantage of that little text bubble to say something enaging.
Or, as my friend might argue, is it cheesy to try to convey any colorful, more personal information passively in an away message? I think he would argue that anything interesting worth saying should be said directly to a person in a one-on-one conversation. Just some thoughts... 
