While we all may live on the Internet now 24/7, thanks to our cell phones and social media, there was a time we had just learned what the Internet even was. The good old days of dial-up service and hardly any websites, it was a time that was much simpler–and much happier.
No bad news, no Donald Trump Twitter rants, and of course, no #fakenews. It was a time where we could get lost on fishy websites and create things of our wildest dreams (without being judged). If you grew up in the 2000s and had a bulky computer that your entire family used, you’ll feel a bittersweet taste of nostalgia from these.
1. Logging onto your computer and having your own account (and trying to make it password protected, but your parents said no).
2. Having to listen to the annoying sounds of your AOL dial-up tone trying to log on–multiple times.
3. Having specific sections of your Buddy List dedicated to people–from family to co-workers.
4. Making your away messages not really “away messages” and having people “hit the cell” or “make it ring” on your flip phone.
5. And, using Comic Sans MS for everything–color coordinated of course.
6. We always chatted with SmartChild, the original Siri.
7. And, using the ORIGINAL emojis.
8. Spending your free time making a dollz version of yourself and all of your friends. They somehow turned out to always be missing an arm.
Dollz Mania
9. When your Internet didn’t connect, you had no choice but to play the very basic games the computer had.
10. But, you never figured out how to play Minesweeper (and still can’t).
11. Playing free trials of games on AddictingGames.com because our parents wouldn’t buy us actual computer games.
12. Who can forget the infamous “my computer is a piece of sh*t” drag around your screen game?
13. We always pretended we actually used paint–but, we all secretly such at drawing (both on and offline).
14. Picking some really tacky MySpace layout for our page–and changing it almost weekly.
15. And, learning how to do basic HTML at age 13, because we had to hide ~*certain things*~ from our profiles–like our Top 8 because we didn’t want drama with our friends.
16. Giving our family computer a virus every. single. time. we got one because we refused to pay for music.
17. And, having our mp3 player look like this because we weren’t rich enough for iPods, or smart enough to change the names of the songs.
18. But, still, this is how we shared our music with our friends.
19. Playing an entire game of The Sims, creating a family and building a house, only to have our characters die in a fire while trying to cook a hot dog.
20. And, finally realizing we could use cheat codes to get more money and build an even bigger house to die in.
21. Discovering we can edit all of our photos on Picnik and make our skin really tan and our teeth really white.
22. And, finally, who can ever, ever, ever forget the hit song/YouTube video, Shoes?