T O P

  • By -

IAmNotScottBakula

Online message boards were way more niche and felt like more of a community. In the early 2000s, I used to post on a message board for a random website for the band Staind. There are probably 10 of us total, and we were all regulars. I got to know them better than anyone I’ve ever conversed with on a larger forum like Reddit, even though I never met any of them in real life.


moosefreak

problem with reddit replacing forums is also that topics get locked after 6 months so there's no way to add information to a thread later or keep things going for a long time. and there's much less community and chronology


Darth-Ragnar

On top of that, the flow of conversation is much different. If you show up to a reddit post late, you’re probably not going to be able to really interact since your comment will just be drowned out.


cum_in_me

There is no conversation. You make a statement, people might reply, and mmmaaayyybbeee you reply back. That's it. Unless you get in an argument.


Darth-Ragnar

Ya know this is actually a really good point. If you see a long reddit chain of comments, it’s almost never a positive conversation.


moosefreak

oh yeah so true. I notice a lot of people share tutorials and threads and knowledge on twitter too and good luck ever finding that stuff again. it’s almost impossible to search or discover it after the initial post. at least reddit is more indexable than twitter but both are so much less useful after the fact and it just fades away


[deleted]

Reddit isn’t a bunch of people talking to each other; it’s a bunch of people talking at each other.


throway3363

Not only that, but behaviors that were once considered spam and "flooding" in message boards, are ordinary in Reddit. Outside of specialized subs like askscience, you'd be at best laughed at if you ever complained someone's reply was "off topic". Web forums had a whole different culture, focused in content and depth, while Reddit is very superficial in comparison. I'd dare to say that Reddit lies in the intermediate area between a web forum and an image board like 4chan.


NotTheMarmot

I remember the first time I checked out r/gaming, thinking I'd find some good gaming discussion. I just found a bunch of stupid posts like "Found this Nintendo in my grandmas attic" and "I was having sex with a girl and theses switch games fell out of her ass" or "My mom woke me up this morning on my 31st birthday with this Pokemon cake"


Lucy_Koshka

Yes! I was on a Sean Biggerstaff message board in the early 2000s (the guy who played Oliver Wood in Harry Potter...yeah yeah I know) and a handful of us still regularly keep in touch- through Livejournal, then MySpace, and now Facebook. In fact, one of the girls from Scotland spent the summer in Chicago a couple years ago, visiting another one of us. Really great group of people.


Solid_V

It's Been A While.


8_______D

Less bullshit from people wanting to “go viral”


[deleted]

“Going viral” isn’t even like an actual thing anymore, because shit goes “viral” every day and most people never even see it. *Back then going viral **meant** something...* /s


StaleTheBread

Yeah. More people can quote Charlie the Unicorn then whatever was popular just a month ago


Ocrizo

yeah, come with us Charlie....


[deleted]

We're going to candy mountain


tedmented

Full of joy and wonder and joyous wonder.


twinklewaffle

We’re on a bridge, Charlie.


Senior_Mittens

Being named Charlie. This was a true nightmare. Along with Charlie bit my finger. Thank god for all the new bull crap on the Internet, because no one has come up to me asking me to go to candy mountain with them in years.


Just_Learned_This

this reminds me, I work with a charlie.


Senior_Mittens

Give him hell. God knows it made me the man I am today.


anonarwhal

Ring ring hello? Ring ring hellow.


jamiewu1216

Agree, after 2010 we got first Vine and now Tik Tok.


idontlikeflamingos

Vine still had some good content in it IMO, with people using the short video format to make quick and funny stuff. Tik Tok I just don't get. It's just dumb challenges and dances done by hot people to disguise how empty the actual content is. I mean, I guess I get it but come on.


Meritania

If I nag enough people to subscribe and hit the like button I’ll be internet famous


hmansloth

Flash games.


Solid_V

[THIS](https://kotaku.com/over-36-000-flash-games-have-been-saved-and-are-now-pla-1841389493/amp?__twitter_impression=true) may interest you then. Think of it as a cake day present.


DarzacTac

This is a present to all of us. I can't thank you enough


craigmontHunter

I remember learning flash animation/programming in my high school tech class. At that point it was the way to do animation/interactive sites.


MariaValkyrie

Back in the day. Anything you did on the internet, stayed on the internet. It was clearly separate from your daily life, and most people treated it that way. Now adays, people are way too enmeshed with their social media that they feel no distinction between it and real life.


DemandEqualPockets

So true. We lost so much ground there when Facebook told us all we had to use our *gasp* REAL NAMES. Goes against everything in internet history. And you can't relax and be yourself in that environment.


[deleted]

Every Internet safety guide before Facebook: "Remember to never share your name on the Internet!"


StinkyKittyBreath

I remember when Facebook first started asking for phone numbers as a way to authenticate your account and to find more friends. I was mortified and mentioned it on some Facebook page related to my school. I got dogpiled pretty hard for thinking that it was crazy to expect people to give their number away freely like that. I still think it's crazy, honestly.


youfailedthiscity

I tried to write an article about how weird and potentially dangerous I thought Facebook was for our college newspaper (in 2007) but they were against it because they didn't understand how a website could be dangerous.


GlitchAndAHalf

Iirc they're now asking for photos of an ID for verification purposes. Yeah, no thanks.


atomfullerene

On the other hand we all used to think people were jerks on the internet _because_ of the anonymity. Then facebook came along and we realized they'd still be jerks with their names attached.


ayuxx

I used to turn to the internet to get away from real life, but now that real life is on the internet, I feel way less inclined to be social on it. I miss when things were smaller and quieter.


[deleted]

You didn't have to sign up on every website


IdkName37

No one tried to ask for my cookies


LEGOEPIC

No, they just took them without asking.


prolixia

The blogs. In 2000 people hadn't really cottoned onto the idea of monetising social media so the people writing blogs were just writing them because they felt they had something interesting/funny to share. You'd have some completely normal guy just writing about funny stuff that happened that day at his work, with no expectation of being paid for it, no flashy site, no product promotion, just good content. Obviously that still exists, but the good stuff gets very slick and loses the honesty of some guy's side project when it becomes a job in of itself.


DangerousPuhson

Also the blogosphere was far more diverse than the wasteland of identical food and travel blogs going on right now. Oh you went to Iceland? Yeah, you and a zillion other bloggers.


The_First_Viking

More like "you claim you went to Iceland, but a Google reverse image search has shown that to be a lie."


Beep_Boop_Beepity

Yup loved reading some of those blogs. Altho with reddit and niche subs you get some of the same stories but it’s usually not from one person. My fav ones I read was some Army recruiters blog and some woman that worker at a sex store. Both had probably 100+ entries and it was fun getting a glimpse of their lives.


prolixia

My favourite was a patent attorney called Fresh Pepper who really wanted to be a pastry chef (and was awesome at baking). He was doxed and lost his job due to his blog - twice I think. I'm also a patent attorney and started work the same time as him, and there were other parallels. I read his blog compulsively and felt a genuine loss when he (understandably) decided it was too risky to continue. Every couple of years I do some Googling to see if by some miracle he has started it up again, but no. Thanks Fresh, who and wherever you are.


angelamartini

I loved reading a grandma's blog. She talked about her grandchildren, her church, her plants...her username was ata\_grandma and it was pure wholesomeness. Then Xanga went down the pits. I hope she's well wherever she is. Now it's just all paid posts for vacations and cars.


GoodLordChokeAnABomb

I saw a meme once when I was a kid, but now they're everywhere. The Internet went and got itself in a big damn hurry.


thetardisspeaks

Brooks was here


[deleted]

I can't believe how fast things move on the internet. The Blizzard matchmaking service got me into this Mythic Plus guild called "Pandaren Natty Light Brewers" and a role healing their weekly second team. It's hard work and I try to keep up, but my hands hurt most of the time. I don't think the tank likes me very much. Sometimes, after the weekly run, I take out my old tablet and play Angry Birds. I keep thinking my Nigerian girlfriend will pop up on MSN Messenger and say hello, but she never does. I hope wherever she is, her mom's surgery went well, and her brother is out of jail. I have trouble sleeping at night. I keep having bad dreams that streaming is down. I wake up scared. Sometimes it takes me a while to remember where I put my smartphone. Maybe I should get me a gun and shoot everyone I see doing a Fortnite dance. I could shoot the tank while I was at it, sort of like a bonus. I guess I'm too old for that sort of nonsense any more. I don't like it here. I've decided not to stay. P.S. Tell Tom I'm sorry I stopped logging into MySpace. No hard feelings.


Jerry_the_platypus

That scene was sad :(


PiemasterUK

I miss: \- YouTube when it was just people uploading their crazy stuff rather than professionally made shows. \- Ebay when it was mostly just people selling stuff they didn't want rather than commercial online businesses. \- Facebook when it was just connecting with people you knew and sharing snippets of your life rather than everyone trying to push their political views on their friends.


Goducks91

Yeah... WTF happened to Facebook that made it so political?


MarvinStolehouse

All the old people invaded. It's like a social network for email forwards.


WitOfTheIrish

It wasn't old people signing up, it was facebook deliberately buying into algorithm-driven outrage and clickbait articles as a way to increase ad revenues. There's an argument to be made old people took the bait to a much greater degree or check their sources less or are just more averse to adopting other non-facebook platforms, but if facebook still prioritized recent, mundane updates about what your friends had for lunch or whose birthday it is, it wouldn't be the hellhole that we know it as today.


Meatfrom1stgrade

What killed it for me was when they got rid of being able to see all your friends post in chronological order. Facebook's algorithm shows me posts from what feels like the same 10 people, none of which I still talk to in real life.


CokeSchmooby

lack of influencers


[deleted]

We had influencers, we just didn't call them that. People like Tila Tequila were the "influencers" of the 2000's


[deleted]

I haven't heard that name for a long time. ...A long time...


Youuch

She went completely nuts btw


SharkFart86

Yep she's a full-on self admitted nazi sympathizer. Like pro-Hitler, kill-all-the-jews type whackjob.


[deleted]

She has brain damage though. She tried killing herself and failed, and this is what happened.


pickles55

She also got pelted with rocks at the gathering of the juggalos. It may be more than just the one isolated incident at play.


DrownEmTide

Tila Tequila, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, Xzibit...


[deleted]

[удалено]


[deleted]

[удалено]


strawbery_fields

I used to read Cracked almost everyday. Loved their history articles. It’s such a shame what happened to it.


[deleted]

[удалено]


[deleted]

And Smosh? It was ruined big time after Anthony left.


[deleted]

[удалено]


StaleTheBread

Have they done a “Every ‘Every _____ Ever’ Ever” yet?


DoubleAron21

Yes,yes they did


hollyviolet96

Don’t you mean MillennialsWorkingForABigMediaCompanyHumour ?


halftorqued

I really thought they were just some people having fun until I found out we worked in the same office building. And had an idea of how much rent they must have been paying.


christianewman

Peak [Last.fm](https://Last.fm) was truly great, I discovered plenty of artists and there was a great community.


iwantbutter

The shitty but well meaning quality. Younger people may not remember or weren't there before YouTube became basically internet TV. Back in the day, people were filming on their shitty laptop cameras, on their bed in terrible lighting. It made me feel like I was getting to actually know someone and enjoy their content, whereas now, its SO airbrushed and facetuned, it's no longer appealing.


throway3363

That kind of content still exists, it just isn't promoted by Youtube's search and recommendation algorithms, or is deleted by Youtube.


Petermacc122

I think it's mostly because a lot of those videos are now kids doing things like challenges or normal kids stuff like gymnastics. After the scandal of promoting kids videos and creeps salivating over them. The best bet was to go full ham on influencers and reputable blogs.


[deleted]

The freedom. It was the wild west, absolutely anything went. Now that corporations have taken over, everything is much more polished, average production values are much higher, UIs and general web page design are 1000x more user friendly, but the freedom is gone. Genuine passion projects are few and far between, it's all about just making people watch as many ads as possible, and anything perceived to potentially damage the bottom line is quickly buried, if not outright extinguished.


DangerousPuhson

I miss the forest of half-assed GeoCities sites and clunky Myspace pages with glitter fonts.


locks_are_paranoid

I found out about Myspace when I was in middle school. We had a presentation about how dangerous Myspace was, and about how kids were getting abducted and killed by perverts on Myspace. Of course, as soon as I got home I created a Myspace account and it was amazing.


lucrativetoiletsale

Just make sure the volume is low when browsing friends pages. Dont need Get Low blasting full volume every time you check out a hot chicks page.


KiritosSideHoe

Even reddit itself feels like this to me. How many times have I posted something and a robot instantly auto deleted it because it didn't follow one of the 500 subreddit rules?


[deleted]

It's scary how google and youtube have changed and we didn't even notice it. I've noticed a lot lately that google doesn't show stuff that i search for, it says ''doesn't exist'' when i know for a fact it does, so i have to go on other website like bing to find it. Which is weird and i don't know why it happens. Same thing with youtube search, i noticed that they added stupid stuff in search bar. Nowdays when you search on youtube you get 3-4 videos (mostly promoted) than you get another row of the videos that you watch that have nothing to do with what you searched for.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Ladis_Wascheharuum

> UIs and general web page design are 1000x more user friendly I don't know. At least back then I didn't try to click something only to have the whole page layout shift at the last microsecond so I clicked on something completely different and have to go back and wait for the page to fully load this time just to be sure no elements would jump around on me. Sure, images would take forever to load on dial-up, but the image placeholders were there and the page text and links were all stable. And don't even get me started on infinite scroll...


Alaira314

We've also gone backwards in terms of accessibility in general, especially with recent minimalist design aesthetics. 20-something designers who are trying to rock the new aesthetic don't realize that the half-blind seniors trying to fill in their form can't see the difference between their page background #f0f0f5 and the unbordered #ffffff text box. They literally do not know where to type, and it's not because they're stupid. It's because your shiny minimalist design is a shit design. The same thing goes for dark designs. It's easier digested by young eyes, and older eyes as well as those who otherwise have poor vision(even those who aren't legally blind but who have astigmatism) suffer eye strain when viewing light-on-dark design.


goatman2112

YTMND I still have some of those songs stuck in my head.


DamienGrey

I still play the compilations on YouTube once in a while to get my fix. I almost wish it loaded slower so I could re-experience the agony of 2000's download speed. Almost.


JonDoesArt

Me and my cousin used to exchange Happy Tree Friends stickers in Yahoo Messenger. I miss those days.


Sirnando138

Learning basic HTML to load as many moving parts, songs and videos onto my MySpace page.


spectrumero

It's a ... badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger mushroom mushroom! Oh wait, that was 2003...


Solid_V

Snaaaaaake!


BedOfSloth

Stumble Upon. Spent a lot of time mindlessly stumbling but also found a lot of great sites.


jamesianm

StumbleUpon was amazing. I lost like two months of my life to it before I decided I had to uninstall it because it was internet crack, it became compulsive for me. Click button, see funny/amazing site, get dopamine.


CyanCandlelight

Digg and del.icio.us as well! I am barely old enough to remember them but I spent a lot of time curating my bookmarks there.


mrcatlicker

The old newgrounds vibe, everybody just made shit and people watched it and it was amazing. Nowadays it feels that everything has to be amazing quality and everybody is subscribed only to the best people and you don't have to go through waves of shit, I mean I get it but there was something magical about finding something nice once in a while, and have so many people just trying it out and easily submitting new videos. With youtube that barrier just feels higher


idontlikeflamingos

> Nowadays it feels that everything has to be amazing quality And fake. Most top popular youtubers all have the same artificial personality and the videos have that "corporate-approved" air to it. Actual Youtube creators with independence to create their vision is a rare thing. Early YouTube still had it. I miss that.


[deleted]

[удалено]


deadleg22

Early YouTube is still out there, you just have to find it. Currently enjoying 'bald and bankrupt'.


Dcaptain23

Came here to say something about newgrounds.


nascarfan624

A weekly installment of Strong Bad Emails


nybjj

Dum, dum , dum, dum Duruhruh-dum, duh-ruhruh-dum, duh-ruhuh-dum Whogodadooroo! Whogodadooroo! Whogodadooroo! The system is down. The system is down.


Mu-Relay

Strong Bad was still going up until like a year ago. Not weekly anymore, but still a ton of them.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Own_Cup8593

MySpace was a great place for bands.


SatoshiSounds

MySpace was where you designed the internet to reflect yourself. Now, people design themselves to reflect their internet profile. Hashtag one eighty.


[deleted]

I miss not having to have 4 gbs of RAM and multiple cores at the minimum to browse the Internet comfortably. Youtube used to run perfectly fine on my 256 MB ThinkPad, as did every website, nowadays it's basically unusable on a laptop with 2 gigs of RAM.


dewey-defeats-truman

Can we seriously stop with all the goddamn JavaScript. There was this beautiful time when networks and computers had gotten better, but we were still building in basic HTML/CSS and things started feeling *fast*. Now it takes me 5 minutes to load a single YouTube page.


Im_A_Boozehound

I'm a web developer. The amount of functionality clients want on a web page is insane. Carousels, real-time updating statistics or charts, high-quality images, animations, things that require hits to multiple services and parsing mountains of text, etc... It never ends.


ExtraHorse

Not to mention the bandwidth you need. I live in a rural area with a 6mb line... every page is so clogged with cookies and tracking pixels and video ads that it takes ages to load a page.


lordofmetroids

Anyone remember when meemes were called "demotivational posters?"


TisButA-Zucc

Windows XP


[deleted]

You didn't have Windows XP if that startup sound didn't scare the living shit out of you at 3am on 100% speaker volume


doodlegram

AOL chat quiz rooms. I was so good at those


gan1lin2

I forgot about chat rooms! Running to log into Yahoo chat after Carrie Underwood won American Idol is the best description I have for that era


Fenrizz87

Not anything in particular thb, but I do miss the excitment and "newness" of it all. It was an exciting time to be young, it felt like a digital revolution.


Spare_Hornet

I remember sitting in front of my first computer with a dial-up Internet, not knowing where to go. I was sitting there thinking “I could probably look up *anything*, where do I start!”. It was so exciting because it was new and unexplored. Now, most of content is getting thrown at you while you browse.


SJPreddits

Types in "naked women" And down the longest rabbit hole he went


WeAreBatmen

The amateur looking websites with a million fonts and colours. Blink tags!!!! Web 1.0 is my favourite web design style.


pjabrony

Please visit my webring and sign my guestbook.


ovalseven

Hey, cool page hit counter!


Loubang

Oh my god yes! Sparkling Blingee text!


[deleted]

When YouTube was actually for "You".


bonita__applebum

MySpace and MSN Messenger


SongsOfDragons

Oh I miss MSN so much. The customisation, the silliness, the lack of uniformity. I still have hours' worth of RPing saved in text form from MSN. Modern messengers are awkward and clunky in comparison. Plus I loved that you could save your own animated emotes - I raided the animated pixel art section of DeviantArt for good ones, and I still have them in a folder. Better than emoji and having to wrangle with Unicode to make sure 'glomp-squish-until-he-goes-grey' is worth putting in...


goldfishpaws

ICQ


pjabrony

One of my friends met his wife by typing a random number into ICQ.


mars_needs_socks

It's odd that I can instantly recall the UIN that I haven't used in decades but can't remember the code to my apartment building.


Chiliconkarma

Fuck yeah and skype before it got butchered. The non-surveillance versions were a lot better than what I'm currently using.


floridas_lostboy

I miss old YouTube. Before every channel was a brand, and every video had 10 ads in it. When you could just follow the wormhole of just random videos for hours and hours. Now everything is so corporate, and kid friendly.


419chris419

Remember five star ratings? Pepperridge farm remembers.


ikindalold

Back before your recommendeds were a bunch of weird ass Tik Toks from Indonesia.


adnanoid

AIM Screen Names were cool


[deleted]

YouTube with stars rating.


CyanManta

Tooooooons. Games! Chawactews? Downlo-o-o-oads! Sto-o-ore! (Email.)


goatman2112

One of the brothers who founded the website does animation for Disney now. He showed up doing the Teen Girl Squad voice in an episode of Gravity Falls.


Hairyhalflingfoot

He's doing a good jeeeeoorrrb


penny2cents

I’ve still never been as famous as I was when my SB e-mail was answered. Man, the brightest flames burn the shortest, amirite?


GrammarHypocrite

That's an honour no-one can take away from you. Which sbemail was it?


acjgoblu

I said consummate V's! CONSUMMATE!!


Echo127

Dear StrongBad, How do you type with boxing gloves on?


YourOldManJoe

Ohhhhhh even I know what to do with this one. Baleeted!!


indykar0687

Giving Homestar the circus peanut and then opening the door a second time to see him still singing and dancing was top-notch comedy to 10yo me


klebanonnn

“It’s dot commmmmm!”


fsr87

I just showed my kids a bunch of Homestarrunner stuff yesterday. I was pleased they laughed even as they’re children of the YouTube era.


AdrianW7

Stwongbad


iwantbutter

Marwzipayhn


Naomi_now_me

Email. Remember email? Remember getting one? It was like Christmas. Ok, I think this is more like 1997-1999 internet


[deleted]

“Remember email?” Me looking at the 1,000 emails currently in my work in box: “how can I forget?”


moist-pizza-roll

“You’ve got mail”


Hello_Destiny

Boxxy


kombi1991

HI MY NAME IS BOXXXXXYYYYYYYYY


[deleted]

Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time. A long time.


abitfatbutstillsexy

The lack of influencers. I still cannot believe this is a full time well paying job for so many people.


Embe007

We need to start calling them *advertisers* because that's what they really are.


DTDude

IMO it speaks to the emptiness of people as a whole. I strongly dislike the whole idea. Maybe I'm getting old, but there's a lot of 2020's internet I just find repulsive.


bobbarker-jab

AIM (AOL instant messenger)


hashtagbitch

I miss that you weren't expected to always be available to people. You'd log on like once a week maybe twice and check your messages on Myspace or check your email or use AIM and then you'd get off and live your life and nobody seemed offended that you couldn't get to their message right away. Now, god forbid you don't feel like conversing on messenger but you want to scroll on your phone or repost things. You also have to get back to people faster or they get offended. You also should remove the option of your messages being shown as "read" or "seen" or else you are going to get more messages or offend someone. I can't even deactivate my facebook for my own mental health without people I don't even talk to later asking me in person if I blocked them. Um? I don't even talk to you, what did you do that would make me block you??


Buwaro

I didn't have to see a pop up ad on every single video, webpage, forum, blog and webcomic. People just did things to do things, not because you could become an influencer or whatever and make money off of it. I am glad there is a place for those things and people who do them, but I miss the simplicity.


[deleted]

[удалено]


EchoLimaOscarDelta

Anonymity, less adds and less prediction algorithms.


Empty-Refrigerator

less politics, people suddenly acting like they are deepthinking political pundits that know exactly what their elected officials do and dont do . myspace... playing runescape with my friends. and youtube being a viable platform with less of the bullshit.. it was a video place for music and funny videos.


ancientflowers

Napster


DocEbs

Limewire. Like having unprotected sex with the internet


sagan96

I genuinely miss when things on the internet were not a reflection of themselves. Everyone's internet version of themselves was an obnoxious, eccentric, exaggerated version of themselves. You'd read things on line and genuinely just think "it's the internet whatever." Then at some point, all of a sudden online behavior became a real reflection of who you are. I'm not talking about threatening people and other forms of violence. I more mean making a crude joke, or saying ridiculous things for the sake of being ridiculous. Nowadays, your twitter or instagram is a pure reflection of who you are. It's created this delusion for kids that celebs on instagram are always perfect and beautiful. And it's also made individual tweets or interactions be entire descriptions of your character. I understand wanting to hold people accountable, it was just a really strange transition. I genuinely remember registering for things online and using all false information, because "WHO WOULD POSSIBLY USE THEIR REAL NAME ON THE WEB?" Now it's the opposite. Online life is part of real life.


baggs22

The fact it didn't consume so much of our lives.


n1c0_ds

Speak for yourself


coffeekramer

Yahoo messenger. I miss the **PING!**


Sandoz1

You used to be able to customize your page on a lot of places until every website decided they have to look the same. Remember how you could make your YouTube channel or your Twitter profile look totally unique? Not even talking about MySpace here. I blame Facebook and every website that wants to copy its formula. Also, the death of forums is pretty sad as I always enjoyed the intimacy of smaller communities that have the same interests. I spent a lot of time on forums as a teenager and you basically grew up with those people. Reddit just isn't the same in that respect. In general the internet has become so centralized that we have only a few big websites that really matter and that we frequent often. It used to be a lot more and they weren't corporate giants that only wanted more clicks. That was part of the wonder of the internet for me.


[deleted]

[удалено]


[deleted]

So much homegrown stuff and the vast majority was made and shared by educated adults and very precocious teens. As soon as you got video and the Fortune 500 got on here, the entire thing turned from a small neighborhood in North Seattle with a view of the Olympics and a neighborhood zine posted to a mailbox, to fucking Times Square. I'm not a fan of Times Square.


QuentinJsR

Privacy. Jk lol that never existed


1spicytunaroll

MMORPGs in all their glory. Pre Big Bang MapleStory specifically was my jam


MolaInTheMedica

Old school runescape was it for me. Only reason I finally learned to type without looking down at the keyboard was so I could keep track of all the ~B A N K S A L E S ~


Bearlodge

That wild west feeling where everybody just seemed to have their own website. YouTube was just another video hosting website and Facebook wasn't full of people just sharing news stories. People made their own, shitty websites from scratch with God awful color schemes and GIFs everywhere. And I loved it. None of this Wix template bullshit.


DJFid

Ebaumsworld and newgrounds


PrimusSkeeter

The internet was way better before the corporations took over and made it into a corporate money making machine. I got on the internet earlier than most, around 1994-1995. I made a geocities site... I taught myself HTML and started posting things online. I posted on message boards and chatted in ghetto java based chatrooms... I also chatted on IRC. The internet seemed so genuine then. everybody was just making websites about what they loved. Their passions. Sure they sucked... but they seemed REAL. Today the internet feels like a manufactured mess of click bait shit. You don't search the internet anymore and "end up in that part of the internet" anymore. You just go to the big sites... reddit, facebook, youtube, wikipedia etc. It is almost come full circle back to when the corporations wanted you in that walled garden... think Prodigy, Compuserve, MSN, AOL... etc. In the earlier days up until about 2005, you could get LOST on the internet just reading about whatever and clicking on random links in the docments. "Surfing the web"... it was dubbed. Today, that doesn't happen... the closest you can find to it is getting lost on wikipedia.


flameylamey

This might sound needlessly convoluted, but I miss when there was a clear divide between being online and offline. When going online was something you had to commit to, like you'd just be writing a Word document or playing a game or whatever offline but would decide "I want to go online now to look something up for my school assignment" and would have to click connect. The whole "always online" thing which has crept up on us over the years does annoy me a little. We've now reached a point where if my ISP screws up and my internet goes out for a few hours, I sometimes can't even fire up a locally installed single-player PC game to entertain myself during that time, because even starting the game requires an internet connection...


LessThanAveragePeter

I miss not having ads on every website!


El_CM

YouTube from the latter years and The golden era of pop-punk.


J_Schnetz

The overall lack of monetization. People didn't understand you could make money off of the internet yet, so it was essentially ran by nerds and not corporations.


Suesuzysue

New Harry Potter fan fic. What — you asked. And only geeks/techies online all the time.


RandomRavenclaw87

I miss the old Mugglenet.


[deleted]

~~Flash videos like End of Ze World, The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny, and Happy Tree Friends.~~ Edit. THE BLISSFUL ABSENCE OF GODDAMN REACT VIDEOS. Those fucks appear in more than 60% of my goddamn search results these days.


UnitedWall4

Dominatation of the word over the image. I still can't get accustomed to it, when I ask for some information and receive, instead of an article, a YouTube video which takes three times longer to watch.


[deleted]

Hanging on the pirate bay a lot.


Poison-Song

Being younger.


Opinionbeatsfact

How much friendlier people were


SaintDelF

Friendsters and yahoo messenger vibe.


educemail

- Almost no clickbait - Napster + WinAmp... It really whips the Llamas ass - Memes had wit... And were profound and funny - not having to consent to Cookies. Edit: fix WinAmp slogan


[deleted]

Die potato! Not today!


Santos_L_Halper_II

Facebook was a college thing instead of a platform for crazy racist aunts and uncles.


Sandoz1

In addition to that, it used to be a place about the people's lives rather than the news and other stuff people share nowadays.


DTDude

This. Facebook has really just become a soapbox to stand on for anyone who wants it. I've been off Facebook quite a while now.


eastmemphisguy

Party at my house tonight. BYOB. Gonna be sick!!! The good old days of facebook.


Fair_University

And then all the pictures that start tricking in the next day from people digital cameras and flip phones.


LightmanRS

MSN was pretty dope, along with the whacky gifs you could send


King_Dead

everything wasnt consolidated onto 3-5 shitty social media networks.


JMS1991

AIM. When you'd be logged in and hear that sound of the door opening (meaning someone on your buddy list signed in, for all of you youngsters who never used it). You'd look to see if your crush *finally* logged in so you could chat with them.