Now that AOL has dropped “America” from its title, you no longer even have the excuse of patriotism to stick with them.

Like us, you may have pondered to yourself: “Now that AOL has so shamelessly sold out America and democracy, practically announcing their intention to be the premier ISP for Al Qaeda, why should I — Joe America — continue to give them my business? Their service sucks. They are overpriced. Their pricing plans are confusing. Also, my neighbor’s toddler fell into a landfill overflowing with the razor-sharp edges of a million AOL cds, and everyone knows the last space shuttle blew up because the combined reflection of those millions of AOL cds shot a laser beam into space that clipped the astronauts on re-entry. Time to quit AOL.” And you feel pretty good about yourself for a minute, until you realize that you’ve got an email identity on AOL that you don’t want to lose. So you keep on paying them, even though they are terrorists.

Well, good news. Losing your AOL mail account is no reason not to quit. Leslie Walker at the Washington Post clued us in on a little tip: if you leave AOL, you can continue to check your email indefinitely. Essentially, if you want to leave AOL, just go to AIM and sign up for an account. As Leslie explains it: “Messages sent to, say, Leslie!@aol.com can be automatically forwarded to Leslie!@aim.com. People can continue reading those messages even if they no longer subscribe to AOL. All they have to do is activate an AIM Web mail account before leaving.”

Leslie then goes on to note the many reasons why AOL sucks, but you — our valued readers — are well-pickled by now in the brine of anti-corporate cynicism, so we assume you already know them all.

AOL’s many broadband options leave members confused [Detroit News]

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