ICQ was a key part of my realization that most people are lazy, short-sighted, idiots.
Everyone I knew wanted to use AIM. ICQ had better features (offline messaging, style overrides, you could change your name without changing your account, file transfers worked better, etc etc). But no one cared.
It’s like how people won’t get off facebook or reddit. Sometimes you have to have a little inconvenience for the greater long term benefit.
Every time I see this I think about opportunity costs. What got skipped in favor of this dubious effort?