The AOL hotel

Eric Simons is a 19-year-old entrepreneur who lived for two months in the AOL HQ in Palo Alto. Simons was given a badge while participating in Imagine K12, an education incubator housed at AOL. When the program ended, Simons’s badge continued to work. So he stayed, sleeping on one of three couches, showering in the gym, and eating for free in the cafeteria. There’s a walled garden joke in here, maybe even a domain squatting joke, too.

For someone with neither money nor an aversion to sleeping on others’ couches, the AOL building had plenty of allure. “They had a gym there with showers,” Simons said. “I’d take a shower after work. I was like, ‘I could totally work here…They have food upstairs, they have every drink on tap. This would be a sweet place to live.’”

It’s too bad Simons didn’t keep a Tumblr of his two months living at AOL, he’d have a book deal already. (via ★asimone)

• AOL