Getting a Kick Out of AIM Fights

It's three in the morning and like any other self-respecting netizen, you're still very much awake surfing the net, tinkering with your Myspace and Facebook, chatting, and having AIM fights with just about anybody. AIM fights are essentially nothing more than simplified popularity ratings and even though you tell yourself that it's not a measure of who you are as a person, you still get that smug look whenever you beat an ex or a high school archenemy at a fight. And you turn green with envy when you come across an “opponent” who scores way higher than you.

Trivial as they may be, AIM fights do have an effect on our self-esteem. You may make yourself come off as someone who doesn't care whether he's popular or not but those tiny numbers that pop up on the result still give a good jolt on how you view yourself. AIM fights rely on social comparison. The basic fact is how we fare in comparison with other people, whether it be on the flatness of our abs or our salary range, affects the way we feel about ourselves.

At the end of the day, AIM fights are really just algorithms and resulting numbers and rankings. They may make you feel good or bad for a while depending on how the fights turned out, but then you get over them and move on. There are other more important things to think about like editing those photos you have so you can look like a model on your Myspace page.