Interviewed by Emily Townsend Nonfiction Managing editor at Chaotic Merge
Emily Townsend: What’s so great about this essay is that AIM can emulate any other universal messaging platform, but the timeframe here instantly sets up nostalgia and relatability. What inspired you to use AIM as the vehicle of this essay?
Erica Hoffmeister: Well, first, simply because that’s how it all actually happened, so it wouldn’t have existed without AIM. But this experience has always stuck out, as it was my first singular memory of actually using AIM. There wasn’t the concept of cyberbullying, or even catfishing, really, the dangers of the internet still just a vague warning that drew more curiosity than caution, so it still felt so… innocent and fun. AIM was literally allowing us to pass notes outside of school—wild! I think our relationship with technology defines our lives and culture so much now, both social media as well as just a means for communication and information, that it’s impossible to not trace that lineage back to the beginning, when something like AIM was so novel. So, I found it interesting to frame the internet (and really social media in its infancy) as still this cornerstone of the coming of age experience, even twenty-plus years ago. Like, it’s different now, but it’s also exactly the same. Chat rooms, AIM, Napster—we want to pretend like it was all VHS rentals, riding bikes and landlines, but tech still defines millennial teen nostalgia. We all have our embarrassing first AIM anecdotes.
Emily Townsend: The transformation from high school to college is swift and a total shift—the “neon string bikini [traded] for something black, something badass, something new to pretend to be.” Do you think without the experience of AIM, would you have such a drastic change?
Erica Hoffmeister: That’s a great question, actually. I wouldn’t say this was the only experience that evolved me to think of myself and my body in that way, but it was definitely the first concrete one, and so arguably the catalyst. Could even be considered the inciting incident in my coming of age narrative arc, honestly. It felt different than other moments because it was unerasable; even then, in the early 00s, there was a sort of existential understanding that the internet was forever because there was no tangible evidence to destroy. Which was terrifying at the time, even though it was just a dumb prank. There was no hiding the shame that I got tricked, that my reputation changed overnight. And I think it did harden me in a way when it comes to trusting people (especially online) that I’m not sure ever went away. It also stresses me out thinking that cyberbullying and things like revenge porn is par for the course during adolescence now. At least I’ll have slightly funny cautionary tale to share with my girls once they get to that age, I guess?
Emily Townsend: “Before emergencies were ever that urgent” is an amazing line that further intensifies the nostalgia. What do you miss most during this young age?
Erica Hoffmeister: The passage of time. It felt so slow at that age, which I know is also due to how we process time passing as our brains are still developing. But I also think it’s a cultural shift due to how we use technology—everything now instant, easy. Speaking to someone across the world, retrieving random facts from a quick Google search, receiving groundbreaking news. And to try and refrain from sounding like Old Man Yelling At Cloud, I will clarify I don’t think all of that as intrinsically negative; but I do miss those long stretches of time when literally nothing would happen. Time would move so, so slow. Can you imagine an entire weekend with no messages from friends, no emails from work, no international news? Not even a phone call from the librarian about a research question I’d left her with the previous week?! I loved it because in those periods of non-event, I’d have time all to myself. I mean, don’t you miss how bored you used to be? How quiet the world could get? As a teenager during those lulls of activity, I’d just… walk alone for hours. Find a big boulder to climb in the hills behind my house, lay there and stare at the sky. Maybe I’d have my Walkman, or a journal, or a book, but most of the time I’d just lay there, listen to time passing daydreaming (I never wore a watch, so did I even know what time it was?). Or I’d lay on the floor in my room at night, door locked, and stare at the ceiling while a bootleg CD played on repeat. Nothing was urgent because it couldn’t be. We had time all to ourselves. And I know that’s also just an adult thing to miss being bored, but I do feel sorry for kids and teens now who have no idea what escape or alone really feels like. The closest thing I have to that now is when I go on my weekly long runs –notifications on my phone turned off– so I have to physically earn that hour or two to myself and let time and the outside world disappear to be alone with my thoughts. Of course, even then, I’m most likely listening to my favorite Buffy the Vampire Slayer podcast, so even nostalgia-obsessed me can’t totally turn it all off.
Emily Townsend: What’s coming up for you? Any new writing projects in nonfiction, or changing it up with a different genre?
Erica Hoffmeister: Always a million different things going! If there are writers that can dial into one project or genre at a time and barrel through it with laser focus until it’s finished, I’m certainly not one of them. So, I’m usually working on projects for years at a time, chipping away at one or the other week to week. I write across genres, so any time I get stuck in one, I just pivot to something else so I’m always still writing something. Next year is one of those years where a few things wrapped up all at once. I have my third collection of hybrid poetry/prose coming out in the summer titled All the Parts You Haven’t Lost, from ELJ Editions, which chronicles my experience of early motherhood with super light (ha) themes like mental illness and postpartum depression. I just finished up with the final stages of my novella-length memoir about religious trauma and abuse, If You Loved Me, You Would, that I’ll be pitching and sending out in the coming months (fingers crossed). I’m also working on some scholarly research on generational nostalgia and millennial cult cinema that I just submitted a research proposal for, which I’m simultaneously working into my ongoing creative nonfiction. “How To Be Catfished Over AIM” is actually one of a full collection of memoir-in-essays that I’ve been slowly writing since 2020, tentatively titled Nostalgia Disease, full of coming of age, nostalgia-tinged recollections. I’m about 2/3 through my planned essays, so I’m hoping to finally finish writing the last handful next year! Oh, and one day, I’m going to finish rewriting that YA horror novel manuscript. Eventually.
Who is Erica Hoffmeister?
Erica Hoffmeister was born and raised in the fragrant orange groves of Southern California and now lives in Denver where she teaches creative writing and rhetoric. A multi-genre writer, she is the author of three hybrid/poetry collections: Roots Grew Wild (Kingdoms in the Wild Press, 2019), Lived in Bars (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019), and the forthcoming All the Parts You Haven’t Lost (ELJ Editions, 2024). She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, thrice for Best of the Net, and has earned several other finalist spots across genres, with a variety of short fiction, memoir, poetry, and critical essays published. As an independent scholar, her research focuses on horror cinema, pop culture studies, generational nostalgia, and Gothic literature, all of which she works into her creative writing. She’s obsessed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, cross-country road trips, and her two wildling daughters. Learn more at: