AOL Instant Messenger launched in 1997 and quickly became the main way teenagers and college students chatted online in the United States, with its door-opening and door-closing sounds marking arrivals and departures in a buddy list. The sign-off slam outlived the service itself, which closed in 2017, because it was instantly recognisable even without the app. Today editors reuse it as shorthand for logging off, ending a conversation or closing a chapter, especially in nostalgia videos about early internet culture.