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i am (early?) gen z so i was very much a child during this period
with that said, donât be fooled by youtube drum and bass playlists or weepy-eyed disney channel retrospectives - much of the mainstream culture of this era was insanely bad. that is obviously still true today, but the difference is that the monoculture was still alive in the 2000s, so your ability to opt-out and find subcultural niches that had cool stuff going on was significantly curtailed compared to today. you basically *had* to be literally anorexic to be conventionally attractive, there was no political âleftâ to speak of (not that it mattered to me when i was a literal child but still), and as others have mentioned, insane 9/11 hysteria lasted well into the obama era.
with all that said the thought of having to grow up today is honestly terrifying. i am old enough that social media did not become culturally dominant until high school (i had a dumbphone until freshman year), and i do feel blessed to have grown up on a pre-web 2.0 internet. you still were able to buy things and own them. a huge number of the greatest games of all time came out during this period, and every mainstream multiplayer release wasnât just a casino with a mid fps attached to it. amazon had yet to completely conquer the earth. the government kind of worked. i donât think i would go back because iâve been spoiled by the sheer volume of amazing things that i have access to today and i do think weâve made some solid sociopolitical progress, but there are definitely some things i miss
with that said, donât be fooled by youtube drum and bass playlists or weepy-eyed disney channel retrospectives - much of the mainstream culture of this era was insanely bad. that is obviously still true today, but the difference is that the monoculture was still alive in the 2000s, so your ability to opt-out and find subcultural niches that had cool stuff going on was significantly curtailed compared to today. you basically *had* to be literally anorexic to be conventionally attractive, there was no political âleftâ to speak of (not that it mattered to me when i was a literal child but still), and as others have mentioned, insane 9/11 hysteria lasted well into the obama era.
with all that said the thought of having to grow up today is honestly terrifying. i am old enough that social media did not become culturally dominant until high school (i had a dumbphone until freshman year), and i do feel blessed to have grown up on a pre-web 2.0 internet. you still were able to buy things and own them. a huge number of the greatest games of all time came out during this period, and every mainstream multiplayer release wasnât just a casino with a mid fps attached to it. amazon had yet to completely conquer the earth. the government kind of worked. i donât think i would go back because iâve been spoiled by the sheer volume of amazing things that i have access to today and i do think weâve made some solid sociopolitical progress, but there are definitely some things i miss
2d ago
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Oh man, dnb and dubstep on YouTube were either amazing or downright cringe back then
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đEvery new piece of technology was so exciting, because of the monoculture every new release felt like an Event, everything was shiny and glittery and in fun colors. Listening to music for the first time on an iPod was crazy. Getting a portable DVD player to watch Buffy the Vampire slayer DVDs on long road trips made me feel like I lived in the future. Seeing digital cable for the first time where it would display the programming schedule with descriptions blew my mind.Â
I played so many games on CD-ROM on a clunky beige monitor attached to a giant tower running Windows 98âa lot of my parentsâ friends were educators so they were constantly giving me new ones to play. Neopets was my life and I loved exploring new sites. I remember frequenting many websites that were just lists of other sites lol. I did also spend a lot of time playing outside and just imagining things. Everything you see on Buzzfeed 90s kid remember the 2000s articles is accurate. The high of optimism when Obama got elected after eight years of Bush was unparalleled!
That said yeah the forced conformity was incredibly stifling and social groups were still cliquish (though this was starting to dissolve by the time I got into high school). Things that would make you cool now would lead you to be mocked or become an outcast so it was nice that emo kids existed because they were a lot more accepting of idiosyncrasies and quirks. Gender nonconformity was frowned uponâI got my hair cut short in eighth grade and was made fun of by so many people, and my male gym coach called me sir!
The beauty standards were insane and also so narrow. I remember being in a Kohlâs dressing room when I was like 12 and crying as I tried on increasingly larger pants sizes because my butt wouldnât fit into anything I tried on and wondering why I was cursed with this body.
HONESTLY the hardest thing for me was that I needed glasses and the only ones that were really available at my local glasses shops were very ugly and nerdy (or if there were cool ones they were designer and cost like $600) and you couldnât just buy them online so I was walking around looking like Harry Potter for most of my childhood and early adolescence and feeling very insecure about it.
The good thing about personal style, culture, and taste is that i truly had to figure it all out on my own by seeking out and curating sources of inspiration, or by word of mouth from other people, rather than having inspiration algorithmically fed to me.
I remember going trick or treating in the mall after 9/11 because some parents including my mother were very paranoid that something (?) would happen? My mom was very paranoid in general because of her own childhood experiences and seeing all of the news stories about child abductions but I wasnât helicoptered and my parents would let me walk around the neighborhood with my friends as I got older. We spent so much time just walking from strip mall to strip mall and like loitering at Barnes and Noble lol.
So it was a mixed bag really but I wouldnât go back and my nostalgia is usually only in passing. This is controversial but I donât have any fondness for physical media other than vinyl records because I remember just thinking CDs DVDs and VHSs sucked and I hated when they would get damaged. When I realized that I could acquire any digital media I wanted on the internet it felt like the world was my oyster and I never looked back.
You know what though actually I just remembered how much cheaper everything was and I got mad soâŠ
I played so many games on CD-ROM on a clunky beige monitor attached to a giant tower running Windows 98âa lot of my parentsâ friends were educators so they were constantly giving me new ones to play. Neopets was my life and I loved exploring new sites. I remember frequenting many websites that were just lists of other sites lol. I did also spend a lot of time playing outside and just imagining things. Everything you see on Buzzfeed 90s kid remember the 2000s articles is accurate. The high of optimism when Obama got elected after eight years of Bush was unparalleled!
That said yeah the forced conformity was incredibly stifling and social groups were still cliquish (though this was starting to dissolve by the time I got into high school). Things that would make you cool now would lead you to be mocked or become an outcast so it was nice that emo kids existed because they were a lot more accepting of idiosyncrasies and quirks. Gender nonconformity was frowned uponâI got my hair cut short in eighth grade and was made fun of by so many people, and my male gym coach called me sir!
The beauty standards were insane and also so narrow. I remember being in a Kohlâs dressing room when I was like 12 and crying as I tried on increasingly larger pants sizes because my butt wouldnât fit into anything I tried on and wondering why I was cursed with this body.
HONESTLY the hardest thing for me was that I needed glasses and the only ones that were really available at my local glasses shops were very ugly and nerdy (or if there were cool ones they were designer and cost like $600) and you couldnât just buy them online so I was walking around looking like Harry Potter for most of my childhood and early adolescence and feeling very insecure about it.
The good thing about personal style, culture, and taste is that i truly had to figure it all out on my own by seeking out and curating sources of inspiration, or by word of mouth from other people, rather than having inspiration algorithmically fed to me.
I remember going trick or treating in the mall after 9/11 because some parents including my mother were very paranoid that something (?) would happen? My mom was very paranoid in general because of her own childhood experiences and seeing all of the news stories about child abductions but I wasnât helicoptered and my parents would let me walk around the neighborhood with my friends as I got older. We spent so much time just walking from strip mall to strip mall and like loitering at Barnes and Noble lol.
So it was a mixed bag really but I wouldnât go back and my nostalgia is usually only in passing. This is controversial but I donât have any fondness for physical media other than vinyl records because I remember just thinking CDs DVDs and VHSs sucked and I hated when they would get damaged. When I realized that I could acquire any digital media I wanted on the internet it felt like the world was my oyster and I never looked back.
You know what though actually I just remembered how much cheaper everything was and I got mad soâŠ
2d ago
Rec
đ„Či was born in 97, so a lot of my formative memories occured between 2001-2008 - it was a really fun time and i have so much nostalgia for it. the town i grew up in was much smaller during that time and the things we had felt more fun and pure.
i was an only child so i spent a lot of time alone reading and drawing. i also loved cartoons of course, and would get small amounts of computer time that were mostly spent playing flash games. when i was 8 i got really into music and from that point i developed an interest in drumming and started collecting alternative emo rock cds you'd buy at hot topic, all thanks to my friend's older brother.
for years my best friends were the neighbor kids on my block. we'd walk to each others houses and yell over the fence or knock on the door to see if we could play. we'd ride bikes and play "ghost in the graveyard" (reverse hide and seek with a safe point, basically), and go to the pool during the summertime. we would use sticks as swords or lightsabers and bring our stuffed animals with us everywhere.
at my grandmas house in the mountains i would explore by myself as young as 7 or 8 years old.i remember many times being terrified i would get lost and die even though i could see her house. i would make kraft macaroni and cheese for lunch and read my dad's skateboarder and mad magazines from the 70s.
i'm thankful that the internet wasn't fully integrated into people's lives at that point, i know it's a common trope but having "the web" as they used to call it be a thing you could turn off/separate from was really underrated. the times you had to experience things like cartoonnetwork.com were really special and meant something. i'll never forget when my dad told me to fire it up after switching us to high speed internet from dial-up, that day forever changed my life (if you haven't heard the noise dial-up made when you'd log on - search it up that shit is bonkers). also seeing youtube get invented was crazy, before that we used to just watch flash videos on websites like newgrounds or albinoblacksheep, the original forms of brainrot
seeing technology advance was pretty crazy in general. we went from vhs tapes to dvds to on-demand all in the span of like 6 years. in that time we also went from cd players to ipods and saw the invention of the iphone.
cell phones used to be uncommon for people above a certain age and were actually quite devisive - my boomer ass parents had "no cell phones" stickers and i can still remember a time when i was out with my family around 2005 and my dad almost got an altercation with a random man for making a quip about him speaking on his cellphone as he walked past us (so out of pocket now that i look back on it jesus christ)
school was really weird because they were trying really hard to adapt to new technology and it was hard to keep up for a couple of years there - those who remember the transition from those 3M projector things to smartboards will understand
i obviously dont know what its like to be a kid now but it feels like it was easier then - i cant think of anyone who ever had "drip" before middle school, even rich kids - sometimes when i see kids wearing gucci im just like man what the fuck
also adults would hold your ass ACCOUNTABLE when you fucked up, no matter how little you were - i can remember being acosted by grown ass adults when i was maybe 4 or 5 years old and that was just totally normal. some adults were really nice and some were really fucking scary and that's just how it was.
mucho texto i know but man i miss it
i was an only child so i spent a lot of time alone reading and drawing. i also loved cartoons of course, and would get small amounts of computer time that were mostly spent playing flash games. when i was 8 i got really into music and from that point i developed an interest in drumming and started collecting alternative emo rock cds you'd buy at hot topic, all thanks to my friend's older brother.
for years my best friends were the neighbor kids on my block. we'd walk to each others houses and yell over the fence or knock on the door to see if we could play. we'd ride bikes and play "ghost in the graveyard" (reverse hide and seek with a safe point, basically), and go to the pool during the summertime. we would use sticks as swords or lightsabers and bring our stuffed animals with us everywhere.
at my grandmas house in the mountains i would explore by myself as young as 7 or 8 years old.i remember many times being terrified i would get lost and die even though i could see her house. i would make kraft macaroni and cheese for lunch and read my dad's skateboarder and mad magazines from the 70s.
i'm thankful that the internet wasn't fully integrated into people's lives at that point, i know it's a common trope but having "the web" as they used to call it be a thing you could turn off/separate from was really underrated. the times you had to experience things like cartoonnetwork.com were really special and meant something. i'll never forget when my dad told me to fire it up after switching us to high speed internet from dial-up, that day forever changed my life (if you haven't heard the noise dial-up made when you'd log on - search it up that shit is bonkers). also seeing youtube get invented was crazy, before that we used to just watch flash videos on websites like newgrounds or albinoblacksheep, the original forms of brainrot
seeing technology advance was pretty crazy in general. we went from vhs tapes to dvds to on-demand all in the span of like 6 years. in that time we also went from cd players to ipods and saw the invention of the iphone.
cell phones used to be uncommon for people above a certain age and were actually quite devisive - my boomer ass parents had "no cell phones" stickers and i can still remember a time when i was out with my family around 2005 and my dad almost got an altercation with a random man for making a quip about him speaking on his cellphone as he walked past us (so out of pocket now that i look back on it jesus christ)
school was really weird because they were trying really hard to adapt to new technology and it was hard to keep up for a couple of years there - those who remember the transition from those 3M projector things to smartboards will understand
i obviously dont know what its like to be a kid now but it feels like it was easier then - i cant think of anyone who ever had "drip" before middle school, even rich kids - sometimes when i see kids wearing gucci im just like man what the fuck
also adults would hold your ass ACCOUNTABLE when you fucked up, no matter how little you were - i can remember being acosted by grown ass adults when i was maybe 4 or 5 years old and that was just totally normal. some adults were really nice and some were really fucking scary and that's just how it was.
mucho texto i know but man i miss it
3d ago
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đ¶some of my core memories:
- playing on webkinz or bearville with my cousin every night
- making random things out of duct tape (the wallets, the bows, omg) (definitely more late 2000s but still)
- the vibrant and fun patterns on everything (i loveeeeed lisa frank)
- being outside a lot more
- when I got a slide phone and I accidentally pressed the internet button and I had to viciously go back to the home screen or it would add a charge to the bill and my parents would get mad
- land lines, we still have ours, but I'm seeing less and less people have them now
- primarily listening to CD's (and not understanding pirating so I was amazed that my aunt could get me beatles CD's for free lol)
- having the computer in a different room and not being on it all the time besides when Id play games or watch cat video compilations on youtube
- speaking of games, the spongebob computer games were fire
- also speaking of games, playing my dad's ps1 (when we play them now we're like, how could we even play these?? the quality is so bad compared to what we're used to now lmao)
- then there were the unfortunate parts of it like the only jeans that you could find were low-mid rise, which Im pretty sure is why I hate them to this day đ love that other people love them again but I can barely do mid rise lol
- also 2000's clothing sizing was INSANE, even for children, I don't miss that at all
- but at least I was alive and conscious for when High School Musical was released
- also the shows were so good (at the time anyway, looking at certain nickelodeon shows as an adult gives me the ick) (you know the ones)
- also you got peak spongebob
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it's still very much a work in progress (the library is especially thin atm) - which is why i wanted to share it here before unleashing it upon my IRL friends and the general public. i welcome any and all feedback, bug reports, and suggestions for things to add. i will be pushing updates to it out like a madman in the coming weeks, so be sure to check back every so often to see new additions to the database and library.
additionally, i am still on the hunt for newsletters from local venues / community organizations / magazines / newspapers, etc. the only cities i have remotely covered so far are nyc, orlando, denver, brisbane, and little bits of worcester and chicago. if you know anything in your area that fits the bill, send it my way!
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