Dear Skype, you were once loved

May 4 is ticking ever closer, and in 2025, this does not just mean Star Wars Day. The time has come for the last handful of Skype devotees to step forward and pay their respects. This Sunday will mark Skype's final gasping hurrah as it sinks into oblivion, subsumed without mercy by Microsoft's golden child, Teams.

The force will never again be with our blue and white friend, once the sole portal that tethered us across land and sea and gifted us a joyous, grainy window into our loved-ones' sofa. Never again will its jaunty syncopated ringtone, once so full of hope and promise, bop its way through a laptop speaker.

The long decline

This teary tribute will mean nothing to most tech users. Lovers of high tech — a callous, fickle, flighty breed — cling to new technological advancements in the same way as a scuba diver sticks to an oxygen tank, and Skype stopped being new a long, long time ago. In fact, thanks to short memories attached to the biological urge to keep up with technology, many of you may be astounded to learn that Skype had not, in fact, already perished in 2014 alongside that other long forgotten cornerstone of digital relationships, MSN messenger.

There is no getting around the unavoidable truth that despite having been purchased by Microsoft for a cool $8.5 billion in 2011 (from eBay, of all places), Skype was never going to be able to compete with Teams. And so began the neglect and inevitable decline. Sick to the back teeth of a temperamental connection and password battles, vagabonds far away from their families long ago lost patience with Skye's curious little foibles.

Most users abandoned this once revolutionary portal without even the hint of backward glance after being wooed by the unpixelated promises of FaceTime, Teams, Viber, WhatsApp. And of course, thanks to a timely and fortuitous pandemic, Zoom.

Now, digital relationships pulsate in full bloom in ways that Skype could only wildly, lustily dream of in the 2010s. Skype video calls were an exciting semi-formal affair, necessitating the involvement of a clip-on webcam, a quick brush of the hair, a slash of lipstick, and strategic positioning on the sofa to showcase everyone's attractiveness to the hilt.

Today, however, with a careless tap of a finger, your sister can enjoy a hitherto unexplored view of your nostrils via WhatsApp as you, during your daily video call in bed hair and last night's pyjamas, examine an uninvited pimple visiting your chin on a random Tuesday morning. Whatever glamour Skype once promised as it spanned an intercontinental gap is deader than a doornail.

Here to the bitter end

We vagabonds who latched onto Skype like a raft as we were flung across the globe, torn from our parents and siblings and friends, must do what a Snapchat-savvy Gen-Z will never understand. Today, we are going to find space in our hearts to deliver one last meaningful eulogy to this unadorned platform that injected a little magic into every pixelated video call that followed its synthetic cheery ringtone.

Although having said that, in this house, the robotic 'boop boop boop' of an incoming Skype call has long since been associated with the Islamabad-based Quran teacher's forthcoming words of wisdom, so cheeriness (synthetic or otherwise) is rarely on the agenda where this neglected platform is concerned.

Nevertheless, allowing Quran teachers to earn a living from their dining table, Skype has spared many a child from three hours of Sunday school every week. Within this same noble mission, Skype has also saved many a bleary-eyed parent from the inventive parking of other Sunday school parents (most of whom, sadly, never did learn to colour in the lines in their youth).

Just as the captain of the Titanic swore to go down with his ship, my children's Quran teacher appears to have pledged a stoic lifelong allegiance to Skype. Together, he and Skype have been with us across three continents and two hemispheres. They will both be there until the bitter end on Sunday, after which he – the teacher – will be picked up by the Teams lifeboat commissioned by Microsoft to scoop up any last-minute stragglers.

Dylan Thomas says it all

Like the demise of many high-tech platforms or items that we once formed a cornerstone of our lives (Nokia bricks, MSN messenger, a Discman to play that Backstreet Boys collection), Skype is not retiring with a bang. Its dying embers are leaving us with nary a whimper. Going directly against the advice of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, Skype is absolutely destined to go gentle into that goodnight. In its old age, it will not rave nor burn at close of day. And there most certainly will not be any Skype user who cares enough to rage, rage against the dying of the light on its behalf.

So Skype, I am here to take one for the team. Today, I will rage for you as you enter the dying of the light. In 2012, a photo attached to an email may have spoken a thousand words – but, you, Skype could translate those thousands of words into moving parts. Thirteen years ago, you were there when I needed to hold aloft my new baby to far-flung friends in precisely the same way Rafiki displayed Simba for all of the Pride Lands. Because of you, Skype, I did not have to think twice before connecting with cousins who were also in the throes of parenting young children.

No longer did I have to resort to a stash of calling cards where the minutes raced to the bottom like sand in an hourglass. Thanks to you, I no longer had to scroll down a series of emails to read a lame joke sent by my sister asking what is the opposite of soup. (For those in suspense, the answer is sodown.) I could now appreciate such wittiness in person. Across thousands of miles. Which is a phrase that was no longer an oxymoron.

Yes, you and I did not always exchange kind words. For example, sometimes, you would take it upon yourself to sign out in a huff because you took a dislike to our usual password (unchanged for months), only to up the ante by also rejecting the new password because "a new password cannot be the same as the old password". What special moments those were!

But Skype, you are forgiven. For every echoey "Can you hear me?", every random sign-out and every new password ever created (and gosh, we went through a lot of those) you will live on only through rose-tinted memories. Not many will miss you. But some of us will always remember you. We will never forget that you were the first to do what a picture never could. You once gave voice to a lame joke about soup. Go gentle into that goodnight if you must – but go knowing that you were once loved.

Have something to add to the story? Share it in the comments below.