1. When your crush signed in, waiting ten minutes before speaking to them made them think you were busy, rather than sitting at home waiting for them to sign in.
2. "Cam4cam?" was a good way of getting them to turn on webcam.
3. But if you weren't looking your best, putting your finger over the lens and pretending it was broken was fair game.
4. тнιѕ ωαѕ α cσσℓ ƒσηт ƒσя уσυя ѕcяєєη ηαмє.
5. And if you started it with a symbol, you appeared at the top of everyone's contacts list, making yourself more visible.
6. Including the phrase "I love ???" in your name made you seem mysterious and sexy.
7. And including the names of all your friends made you seem popular and busy.
8. Nudging your crush was a good way of getting their attention.
9. But you had to be careful not to do it too often.
10. Another good method was signing in and out repeatedly so you kept appearing on their screen.
11. If you accidentally revealed too much, "oops sorry wrong convo" was a convincing lie.
12. "That was my friend lol" was equally believable.
13. If you ran out of conversation, you could always say "brb" or "gtg" while you thought of something to say.
14. Listening to ~cool tunes~ in Windows Media Player meant that your crush could see how sophisticated your music taste was.
15. And challenging them to a game of Minesweeper was a good way of testing their mind.
16. If your crush had been typing for ages, you knew they was about to say something serious.
17. And if they stopped typing, "It said u were typing. what were u gonna say?" was a good question to ask.
18. Besides, you could always try to lighten the mood with one of these.
19. Not this one, though. This one was too forward.
20. If you agreed with something, "kk" was cooler than saying "ok".
21. Print screen-ing your conversations and showing them to a friend was a valid way of finding out whether your feelings were mutual.
22. But basically, if you managed to have an entire conversation in emoticons, you were obviously meant to be.
23. If your mum walked into the room, repeating "..." on lots of line breaks meant she definitely wouldn't know what you were up to.
24. And if everything went tits up, you could always "appear offline".
H/t @MSNmessenger