May 20th 2013, 16:29:23
Yes, I was involved in creating punt codes, punters, and punt wars. I was in a punter "clan" and we would raid a rivaling chat room and punt everyone off.
It's been like 10-15 years and my memory still recalls the basics:
The 1 IM punt was a basic font code that the Instant Message HTML handler couldn't handle.
font=99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
would give a WAOL error and crash the entire connection. This was devastating for dial-up.
Then instead of fixing the issue, AOL added a new feature in AOL 4.0 which made it so when sending an IM, it opens the IM on your screen as well, which WAOLed both users.
This was easily dodged by sending $imsOff or something like that when sending the message. They eventually fixed the 1 IM punt but lag punts were equally annoying. I remember creating a few lag punt codes.
I'm happy to find people out there who were like me. Those were fun times. :)