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This will hopefully be the first in a series covering member profiles and directories from different time periods and experiences, starting here, of course...
America Online went, well… online in 1993. I wrote a bit about this wild event here. While in elementary school, I got dumped into AOL early and consider it my “hometown” on the web. Despite my young age, I maneuvered myself into chatrooms and conversations, visited keywords and more. It had quickly grown into the most popular method of experiencing the internet in America. And part of that was the America Online member directory, of course!
The only screenshots of profiles I could find were from mass shooters (ie, unlikely to be typical). Feel free to disregard it if you think this secondhand account isn’t worth much, but I'd like to talk about it anyways. So, forgive me some anecdotes, because I'll be referencing what I remember of each field from these social media profiles from the 1990s...
The member name field was, in theory, to contain a person’s given name initially. Many older people signing up for AOL inserted that, actually. My dad did for a good four years or so after (early) adopting America Online. As a youngster, I was taught otherwise, and told to “leave it blank” or use a “made-up random name” by the adults in my life. I believe my first inclination was to list my name as The Green Blade, and later, a series of Pokémon jokes. A lot of spelling errors back then because spellcheck sucked.
Many other kids got similar advice, which we carried (and still carry, for some like me in this generation) into adulthood. This meant plenty of generation X and millennials listing names that were fanciful or just inside jokes changing on a whim. My name’s not Stray Cat Claire; I’m not even called Claire IRL, so, as you can see, these practices never died in my life. I’m sure some “grew out” of them into plastering their real full names (and faces) everywhere, but, er, no, just, no…
For location fields it was common to list an approximate, fictionalize things, or just mumble something. Listing large geographical areas like "deep south" or "Southern California" made things easier. Just listing your state was probably most common, though. Somtimes, people left it blank, or typed something strictly and obviously fictional ("Lavender Town" etc). Sometimes, this was part of ongoing fandom stuff.
Some people living in very large cities listed on their profile. Sometimes, those cities America Online chatrooms dedicated to them, after all. I remember ones for Atlanta and Charlotte, and surely plenty for others. While the stigma against meeting people online has waxed and waned over the years, it was obviously quite nebulous in the 1990s. AOL liked things that way. Were users meant to list their location and link up in person?
Birthdate seems like a blunt question for something so public, doesn't it? True, it was the 1990s, but that kind of information was already becoming important and therefore should've been a bit more guarded. To be fair, you were given the option to list whatever you wanted, not just a date. Some people did list their full birthdates but most, remembering right, listed random other stuff, just their star sign, or jokes. The older folks never once mentioned that sharing birthdays online might end poorly, and that was because most didn't realize that. The lesson had let to be learnt en masse, so to speak.
And sex? Yes, there was a field for that. I believe it had only checkboxes (male, female, prefer not to say…) but yes, you were given the immediate option to list it. I suspect anyone who was non-conforming might've felt weird answering with just checkboxes. I don't remember anyone panicking over the very option to list one's sex online as such. Back in the 1990s, it was wholly acceptable to ask that kind of question for a new profile. This might've, again, owed to those restrictive checkboxes keeping everyone to a binary.
Meanwhile, marital status showed up. Maybe AOL was expected to be used for dating?
True, seeking a partner on early America Online seemed subtly encouraged for adult users. There was an intense advertising campaign featuring a full-length movie that played up that angle for AOL. It became a place to signal your intent to date, or brag about your partner.
And no, I don't care how much you love Tom Hanks. That movie was a huge commercial for America Online itself. I'm not saying it wasn't entertaining, but it was advertising. It did some to cut into the fear (and homegrown stigma) surrounding online relationships at the time. The whole point was dollars in AOL's pocket, but it had other effects, too.
Yah, people used it to list their ships, ie, they'd scrawl their name as "Fox Mulder" and then write "Engaged to Dana Scully" in the marital status area. I did this a ton. Now, it's still a thing if you're actually roleplaying, and usually not publicly, so...
Anyways, there was an overused hobbies field, too. Some people would just list what America Online probably expected from the field, ie real-life hobbies. "I enjoy skiiing and watching old sitcoms," or something. At the time, and in retrospect, I saw no problem with doing this, no reason to twist this field from its original intention.
So, my seventh-grade self wrote things like "I like running, riding horses, and want to be a paleontologist ." For kids, that was pretty typical. Some people used the field for music genres, fandoms, and related, too, and some would list a fictional character's interests instead.
Since I was in fandom, I mostly saw people listing their favorite ships, or adamently involving themselves in shipping wars. While I think shipping wars are silly, I do think listing your fandoms and such online is a great way to meet likeminded people. This field often served its purpose.
The computers field sometimes contained the absolute truth (if you were nerdy enough), or some sort of inside joke (“Birkhoff set this one up!”). Ideally, you'd (I guess) simply list your operating system, ie "I use Macintosh," or "Powered by Windows 98." This would allow other users to know what sorts of files (oh dear god, I know this sounds terrible) they could send you. For fun, tech support, or friendship, or whatever. Or to hack you with their 1337 skiddie powerz.
One particularly common meme was to list something to the effect of "WHAT COMPUTER. I AM USING MY POWERS." I use the word meme on purpose here, because it really did spread like one, even back then. I guess the implication had been that the users were psychic?
By the time it became a popular joke, I was a little too old for psychic internet access, I guess. They were actually pretty funny, even if they got really cliché over time. It's possible this was only in my weird little fandom circles. Maybe other cliques had different proto-memes, I'm sure.
The occupation field could contain a joke, something vague, or something truth-slanting and important-sounding. Lots of people listed things like "waitress" or "retail." Others went weirdly specific, with ("I work at the Jimmy's across from the Pizza Hut on Main in Carlotta") from more naïve folks. And people lied, ie "I'm a ballarina from France!!1" etc. Weirdly, people seemed to lie (or at least later admit to lying) about their job more frequently than about their location on AOL, remembering my experiences.
Some guys used the directory on AOL like a Linkedin profile, listing their top-notch skills. They were usually in the new computer industry themselves, seemed like, or tried to be, listing their achievements with programming or related fields. I remember they would often even include a call-to-action in their profiles ("send me an e-mail!). I don't know if any networking on America Online, prior to the dotcom crash, actually worked, but people (usually younger men) tried.
I remember personal quote was usually just some cliché (“The truth will set you free!” “The only thing to fear is fear itself!”). People tried to sound smart here, or they just didn't try much at all. In my circles, it was often something sending a heavy fandom message. Sometimes, that field functioned just as a direct statement from the user, ie, "Do not message me if you voted for George W. Bush." or something like that.
In fandom, some people (mostly gen x?) would follow the old safety suggestion of using a favorite fictional character's info in their profile. They would then add at the end that they wanted to roleplay in whatever genre, through mailing list or messenger.
Whenever someone roleplayed, it was common to use asterisks or, oddly the characters :: before and after describing an action. That was true in chatrooms too. I remember having to list on my profile very fucking adamantly that "this is a fictional profile and I do not roleplay" after my own profile took on a fandom tone.
In retrospect, a metric fuckton of these member profiles were extremely, extremely pretentious. A lot of writing from that era of AOL (especially autobiographical stuff) is. No problem here, though! I’m not one to talk given how my own site ( a quarter-century later) reads. I’m not judging! It’s just an observation and I find it chill, actually.
It just shows how people were struggling to figure out how to talk about themselves online (if at all) in the 1990s. Just how do you write an online bio, and why should you? What’s safe to say, even? What’s traditionally appropriate? Are the rules the same online? All these questions were new in the 1990s. They’re still hard to answer. I bet a lot of people on neocities and other new web-adjacent sites struggle with similar questions in different forms today.
Hmm, though? I might just expand this article a bit, with profiles (hah) of other profiles throughout my digital history, including Livejournal, Youtube, and others. They each allowed us to express our identity in a slightly different way, and encouraged certain things while discouraging others. I would love to look at that a bit.
With profiles, more than anywhere else, I saw a strange little line start to materialize between people who spent a lot of time online, and those who did not? Weird stuff!
The images from this thread mostly come from here and here. Since they’re screenshots of very old profiles and programs, I guess they’re fair use, but I realize it could be a gray area. If your screenname is referenced, though, contact me.
This page was last updated on September 28th, 2025.