Well, you joined FT in 2003, which is the year I joined AA, read up on FT, and started collecting AA miles like the world was about to end, including churning Citi AA cards as fast as Citi allowed (which was pretty fast back then). I have Liftetime Platinum at AA due to earning 2+ million miles before they stopped counting all mles from all sources toward lifetime miles in Dec 2011 (and well less than half of that 2MM was from flying, and over half of what I did earn from flying was from bonuses on flying). So i don't have to fly AA any miles minimum any more to have elite benefits.

I didn't foresee how bad travel would get without status, but as someone tall who wanted exit row seats (back when those were the only kind available), it made sense for me to pursue the only lifetime status I could pursue (given that I have 0% business travel), because getting exit row seats without status was already hard back then (even if reserving other seats was a lot easier than it is now).

I'm curious therefore why you didn't pursue lifetime AA status back when it was possible (without flying a whole lot)? Was it just because you didn't realize how bad non-elite flying would become at the legacies?