The acronym 'A/S/L' (Age, Sex, Location) was the standard opening gambit in the early days of the internet, particularly within AOL Instant Messenger, IRC, and various chat rooms. It represented a time when the web was a wild, anonymous frontier where you needed to quickly identify who was on the other side of the screen. In modern meme culture, A/S/L is used as a nostalgic shorthand for the 'Old Web.' It often references the common trope of users lying about their identity, famously summarized by the '16/F/Cali' response. The meme persists as a way to poke fun at modern social media etiquette by comparing it to the clunky, direct, and often suspicious interactions of the late 90s and early 2000s.