does anyone miss the early 2000s internet scene?

[butterball]

as title. AIM & msn messenger were the best. plus, social media wasn't as abhorrent as it is nowadays. although w that said i was addicted to myspace :,)

 

[vak]

I miss the uh oh ICQ sound so much it makes me cry

 

[butterball]

I miss the uh oh ICQ sound so much it makes me cry

omg ICQ!!!

 

[DeletedAccount0864]

Maybe, but smart phone users destroyed everything and most people want what shit exists now.

 

[butterball]

Maybe, but smart phone users destroyed everything and most people want what shit exists now.

:(( i hear you! i know there's still a "way" to use msn messenger via Escargot for example but ofc its still not the same :C

 

[DeletedAccount0864]

:(( i hear you! i know there's still a "way" to use msn messenger via Escargot for example but ofc its still not the same :C

Yes, I know Escargot, and you're right, it's not the same at all. What made MSN (and other IMs) great was the Internet culture around that time which was astronomically different. I do miss it, but I also recognize that most people do not want what made it what it was. I'm an outlier, a freak just like every other area of life.

 

[silent.desperation]

IRC and MSN Messenger. Blast from the past!

 

[leavingthesoultrap]

I am nostalgic for that era. Music, movies... everything seemed more optimistic and relaxed

 

[ThymeToLeave]

That's kinda what this forum is. Most conversation moved to Facebook, Twitter, and Discord but SS is what forums were like back then. It's a fairly eclectic mix of people talking about a couple shared interests but with plenty of general off-topic discussion.

 

[hibikikyuxx]

Social media was a mistake. It's one of the worst things to happen to society. The amount of hate, distraction, and misinformation it caused is just terrible. All that fake bullshit. Not to mention the fact that people have 24/7 unadulterated access to everyone else's status, wealth, success, etc. I feel sorry for the kids who have to grow up in the current modern era, which will forever be remembered for the brain rot it caused.

 

[Malaria]

Absolutely, I miss 00s internet. It was less corporate and there was less censorship. People weren't going on the same few websites, it felt like there was more variety. I also feel like websites had a better look back then, I don't like that so many websites now have a minimalist design. I also feel like online bullying wasn't as bad back then. When someone called you a mean name online, that was it, that was the end of that. These days, if you're not careful and have a beef with the wrong person, you could get doxxed, swatted, have bad things sent to your house, etc. I feel like people these days are more unhinged online than they used to be, but that could be because there's more people online now than there were before.

This is pretty subjective, but I also feel like memes from back then were funnier too. I find the old flash animations from back in the day, YTMND, YouTube Poops, etc, a lot funnier now than... soyjaks and gigachads. I dunno, more power to you if you like modern memes, but I definitely prefer memes from the 00s.

 

[KuriGohan&Kamehameha]

old internet was the best. When I was a kid in the 2000s i feel like the internet offered a lot more interesting and segregated spaces that allowed people to fit their niche and have some semblance of privacy, while also catering to the right demographics.

For kids, we had loads online games and virtual worlds like neopets and other MMOs that were designed with the sole intention of escapism and having fun. Nowadays, such things don't really exist anymore, which is why you see kids as young as 8 on social media when they shouldn't be!! Flash games and browser games are dead in the water, as are most other kid friendly websites.

There were also many great forums back in the day, that offered loads of interesting and in depth conversations on whatever topic you were interested in. For example, a game series I was really into had a huge fan site and an active forum that was well organised and hosted many different gameplay and lore discussions. In the present day, sites like this have been swallowed and taken over by Reddit, which is an incredibly shitty platform yet somehow manages to keep it's monopoly on hosting niche communities.

Back in the days of the old internet, it was much easier to express ones self and stay anonymous as well. There was none of this, oh my boss saw I posted an anime girl in a bikini on my twitter and now I'm getting fired, bullshit. You could be as unhinged as you wanted because no one was trying to track down your identity over a forum post. Social media didn't exist, so no one was going to try to dig up dirt on your or cancel you because of some low brow thing you posted when you were 12.

With the internet becoming more accessible to the masses, rather than a more niche platform for academics and nerdy sorts of people, it has just become one giant advertisement and a cesspool of low effort content to be sanitized and monetized. Most people using the internet now don't understand how any of it even works, while if you were an old internet user you'd probably learn some html, CSS, and basic web design skills so that you could customize your online experience. Now it's all cut and paste slop.

 

[Eternal Pessimist]

Surfing the web as a kid in the early 2000s felt like an adventure. You never knew what you might end up stumbling across. I'm sure part of that was just the magic of being young and things being more exciting to a young person in general. However, I think it was also the fact that the structure of the internet was very different. It was a bunch of independent sites and at most you would have things like webrings connecting them. Now it feels like it's mostly just the same four or five sites that crosspost and feed on the same content.

 

[woundedanimal]

No. I was abused via the Internet and now there's a literal stage play hypothesizing my 6th grade AOL history. fuck that.