2000s-era Internet Nostalgia

[ReeseJamPiece]

The 2000s were the peak of the Internet imo, nothing topped it. Back when each website had its own obscure niche to it. Given it's about to be 2023, why not make a 2000s nostalgia thread?

[ReeseJamPiece]

I remember 4chan prior to it being an absolute cesspit. I didn't use it but there's no denying it had a major impact on the modern Internet. All the 'oldfags' have left, and now it's just wojack reaction images. Given all the controversy in recent years I am somewhat glad it's dead(ish). It's an odd relic.

[CFWMagic]

You have lost the game. Also sage goes in the image field.

[ReeseJamPiece]

4 hours ago, CFWMagic said:

You have lost the game.

 

True, but it's fun to reminisce. Nothing lasts forever.

(realized this was in reference to another thing, damn it has been long)

Edited December 31, 2022 by ReeseJamPiece

[Biodegradable]

I wasn't all that invested in the internet during the 2000s. Those were my formative years and I really only used it as a tool for my school work rather than for fun and was much more interested in other things. I do remember spending some time watching old Flash cartoons and such back then on websites like AlbinoBlackSheep, StickSuicide, Weebl's Stuff, Newgrounds and even remember seeing some of @mouldy's old GIF animations from back then. It's also how I discovered David Firth's work while he was still an animation student, which in turn inspired me to pursue animation at university myself.

 

We had a dial-up modem and that combined with rubbish Australian internet made streaming video on YouTube basically impossible. I swear, it took over an hour to buffer a 5 minute video back then so I missed a lot of early internet video culture from back then. That about ends what little fuzzy memories I can conjure up from back then.

Edited December 31, 2022 by Biodegradable

[HavoX]

I remember when Firefox used to be Phoenix, then it became Firebird, and finally Firefox.

I also remember the time when IRC was a thing.

[CFWMagic]

9 minutes ago, HavoX said:

I remember when Firefox used to be Phoenix, then it became Firebird, and finally Firefox.

I also remember the time when IRC was a thing.

Goes beyond that. I'm a 90s kid, so I also remember that the whole mozilla thing originated from netscape navigator. Which is one more reason I keep saying that netscape navigator was a fucking mistake. Also *nix used to be leet. Also:
 

You're welcome.

Edited December 31, 2022 by CFWMagic

[leejacksonaudio]

/b/ was never good.

[ReeseJamPiece]

4 minutes ago, leejacksonaudio said:

/b/ was never good.

 

Truer words have never been spoken. 

[LadyMistDragon]

I can remember, I can rememburrr, when 4chan was that sort of trashy place that seemingly gave birth to image memes that back then, was just known as the place where socially-maladjusted people used to congregate and made people with generally low self-esteem already even worst. Now these people have infiltrated the mainstream of the right and now stand against the decadence and decline of (Western) society. How the worm fucking turns. Give it another few years and they'll all be a bunch of Vox Day clones.......

 

But like bio, I wasn't really on the Internet too much. There was this little thing called RL after all, and I wasn't so babied that I wanted to just hide from the world. If I spent my free time with anything, it was video games and I guess forum culture may have just bored me. I was sort of around the alternate history forum world for a few years but due to shame over having not actually gone anywhere in life after high school, I left after a few years.

 

Imagine my surprise then when I returned to Doomworld and found it a much kinder, gentler place in 2021. Although being smarter will also help.

[ReeseJamPiece]

1 minute ago, LadyMistDragon said:

Give it another few years and they'll all be a bunch of Vox Day clones.......

 

That implies that the average 4chan user has the intellectual and physical capacity to do more than eat pringles in their bedroom and screech. The website itself was and still is complete garbage, I more so miss the old media which spawned from the Internet.

[LadyMistDragon]

1 minute ago, ReeseJamPiece said:

 

That implies that the average 4chan user has the intellectual and physical capacity to do more than eat pringles in their bedroom and screech. The website itself was and still is complete garbage, I more so miss the old media which spawned from the Internet.

As the Internet overall grew up, I think there were people that at the very least became desirous to make themselves sound smarter like a bunch of Sargon of Akkad clones. And since that guy's not so smart to begin with (like my dad if he wad more educated)....

[Test Tickle]

 

[ZeroTheEro]

2000s, the time when I was introduced to fanfiction.net, jumpscares and flash games.

[Gore]

The 2000s were a good decade to say the least, but I think the 2010's was the peak of the internet. 

[dasho]

To me, the internet peaked when information was less centralized. It was fun having to actually use 4-5 different search engines and crawl through web rings and such to find out more about what you wanted to know. Or hop on IRC or maybe even a BBS.

 

[sincity2100]

Back when Internet was fun to browse through, and not an Oversaturated mess..

[ReeseJamPiece]

1 hour ago, LadyMistDragon said:

As the Internet overall grew up, I think there were people that at the very least became desirous to make themselves sound smarter like a bunch of Sargon of Akkad clones. And since that guy's not so smart to begin with (like my dad if he wad more educated)....

 

Sargon of Akkad couldn't form an articulated sentence if his life depended on it. The same goes for his absolute muppet of a friend Dankula. He is an embarrassment to our country. No surprise that 4chan birthed such mongs. They seem to think reality revolves around le funny memes and fail to take even themselves seriously. 

[ReeseJamPiece]

40 minutes ago, Gore said:

The 2000s were a good decade to say the least, but I think the 2010's was the peak of the internet. 

 

The 2010s were the peak of the Internet sure, but it was the era of the social media craze. All the niche media were overshadowed by whatever the algorithms pushed to the top. 

[Caffeine Freak]

Early 2000's internet for me means phpBB boards, Newgrounds, eBaumsworld, Rinkworks, gimmicky Flash games with jump scares, early video hosting sites, and shock sites where maybe the most interesting thing was trying to decide which images were real and which were fake. Over all, I prefer today's internet. Aside from it being larger and faster, there's more resources and different avenues for finding what you need, provided you're willing to look beyond the first 5 search results of stuff that's algoritmically pushed to the top. Pardon the vague language.

 

I suppose the advent of modern social media made this change inevitable, but one thing I did like about early 2000's internet was the more laid back atmosphere of it all---that isn't to say people didn't fight and hate each other, but it generally was a very low stakes situation, because everyone's IRL info and identities weren't so deeply inextricably linked with all of their online activities. Nowadays, people are terminally online to the extent that they build up their entire identities over social media profiles and delude themselves into believing they have a bunch of friends (hint: online friends are mostly nonexistent, if you think you have them, you probably don't.) As a final side note, (and I know this is an odd segway) one thing I am really enjoying about the more modern internet, in particular the last ~5 years, is the paradigm shift away from massively centralized social media. The next generation of social media sites and video hosting platforms will be smaller and more numerous---at least initially---than the ones that rose up in the early-mid 2000's. I view that as a net positive. It's better for the internet and society at large if everybody isn't clustered around the same places all the time. 

Edited December 31, 2022 by Caffeine Freak

[maxmanium]

I didn't experience the old internet too terribly much as I was born in 2000. I do, however, remember using that AOL client circa 2005/2006 on my dad's computer. Anyone remember Nicktropolis? Shame it's lost to history. I do remember using YouTube as early as 2009/2010 -- definitely did get to witness the golden age of early YouTube Poops, as well as those dumb videos saying that they will get flagged.

 

Also, I wouldn't say 4chan is necessarily dead, just perhaps calmed down a bit; not in terms of content, but how much attention people pay to it, I guess.

[ReeseJamPiece]

2 hours ago, Test Tickle said:

 

 

It feels so long ago, yet at the same time feels like yesterday. Wonder if he ever got the cheezburger...

[xScavengerWolfx]

2000's era internet? Oh man i'm going to need my walker for this one boys lol.

 

I remember 2000's era internet being a wild west of crazy, cringy, down right weird time line.

 

Kids these days would never understand the rawness of bizarre, weird, creepy and what the fock websites you accidentally find or get told about it at school yard rumors.

 

But flash games we're the big deal for me as a kid, now most of the websites are either gone or been replace with something else.

[LadyMistDragon]

24 minutes ago, xScavengerWolfx said:

 

 

I remember 2000's era internet being a wild west of crazy, cringy, down right weird time line.

 

 

 

 

Like the nonsense that gave birth the edgiest, baddest, and most don't-mess-with-me dude Shadow The Hedgehog

 

Quote

Kids these days would never understand the rawness of bizarre, weird, creepy and what the fock websites you accidentally find or get told about it at school yard rumors.

 

Or the things which gave rise to creepypastas, which I thankfully missed out on for the most part. Even now, you can run into people asking ridiculous questions like "Is Jeff the Killer real?" like the story in question wasn't just a big, steaming, pile of purebred cow guano/

 

Quote

But flash games we're the big deal for me as a kid, now most of the websites are either gone or been replace with something else.

 

 

Now unlike creepypastas, I do remember these! They'd be on school computers sometimes, and they were lots of fun to just poke around and to beat your personal best, not unlike arcade games in an earlier era.

[Drywtler]

Born in 2000, between 2005~2009-ish I only played flash games, and watched youtube. Mostly Sonic the Hedgehog related.

No forums, no IRC, no chans, only Windows Live Messenger with my school friends and family, that was it.

Some of the videos i used to watch probabbly got deleted (using copyrighted music and whatnot). Can't find them anymore, I can't even remember the titles, and youtube still doesn't have a fucking sort by oldest in the search page.

Didn't even knew how to download games and stuff because my dad did it for me back then, so I only knew games like Counter-Strike 1.6 from cybers...

Edited December 31, 2022 by Drywtler

[Xaser]

This thread needs more Arfenhouse.

 

(cw: 2000's internet humor slurs -- pretty mild, but present).

 

 

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

I remember the 2000's, back when gore sites didn't have advertisements for porn. Back in third grade, I could safely show my friends pictures of a guy who stuck his hand in garbage disposal without having to worry about getting in trouble for looking at boobs.

Edited January 2, 2023 by TheMagicMushroomMan

[Caffeine Freak]

 

Burninating all the people.

[heliumlamb]

i'm very glad youtube poop progressed far beyond that of "I'D SAY HE'S HOT ON OUR TAIL", even within a year or 2 its upload. the wonders of any and all art made with uhh.. dubiously acquired professional software tools.

i was more of fiend for stuff like this back then tho
(PHOTOSENSITIVITY WARNING: LOADS OF STROBES)

 

(PHOTOSENSITIVITY WARNING: LOADS OF STROBES)

[Denim Destroyer]

If you want to come across old-net sites I recommend checking out this search-engine. Most of the indexed sites are from the old days of the Internet. I also recommend using the "surprise me" button for some randomized nostalgia, not everything is child appropriate so keep that in mind.

https://wiby.me

Edited January 1, 2023 by Denim Destroyer