At first
I thought this was really
cool. A real, live
woman in a
translucent dress made of
data comes out of your
screen and gives you help with the
computer! Okay, it only happened in the
ads, but
wow!
Every geek's dream!
I was young. I repent.
This was back in the bad old days when geek meant a Bad Thing, and I was a geek only in that sense. In fact, I wasn't good enough with computers even to be one of them... I'm probably still not... but I digress.
When I became a man, I put away childish things. I came to realise that Connie the AOL girl, apart from being a spokesperson of the evil empire¹, was really, really irritating. That hideous whiny voice, and that stupid little pursed-lips smirk she does when she's indoctrinated another helpless luser into the evils of AOL. That aside, she wasn't even good-looking. How could I ever have been so blind?
Connie is still out there somewhere, polluting the ether, extolling the so-called 'benefits' of AOL's 'free' trial period. I catch her sometimes on the TV in the bar where I work. Invoking the beneficence of Linus, or the benevolence of nate, seems to exorcise this demon in female form.
...at least for a while....
[1] Not the Evil Empire, of course: with the capital letters, that's still Microsoft. AOL is just another evil empire to add to the multitudes... their name is Legion, for they are many....