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🤮
hahahha i feel bad for people who only learned how to use the internet for like stupid formal shit like a 9-5 (🤮)
sidebar: i feel like this is very GeNeRaTiOnAl ~~~~~ and kinda depends if you were popular or not growing up. i saw a tt video one time of a girl explaining how she’s an elder millennial but can keep up with internet culture. bc she used it to survive high school as a bit of an outcast. bc popular peeps didn’t need to find friends on the internet but us outcasts….. yeah 🪞bloop!!!! (logic voice: WHO CAN RELATEEEEE)
back to my main point: and didn’t learn how to use the internet by doing something amazing, cute, funny, stupid, silly like all the shit we used to use the internet for (was in middle school for the limewire, myspace/xanga/live journal/flickr and high school for height of tumblr era, start of ig, snap, etc.) i miss THE PEOPLES internet … i hate the megacorp internet we have now 😫 FUCK FASCISTS
sidebar: i feel like this is very GeNeRaTiOnAl ~~~~~ and kinda depends if you were popular or not growing up. i saw a tt video one time of a girl explaining how she’s an elder millennial but can keep up with internet culture. bc she used it to survive high school as a bit of an outcast. bc popular peeps didn’t need to find friends on the internet but us outcasts….. yeah 🪞bloop!!!! (logic voice: WHO CAN RELATEEEEE)
back to my main point: and didn’t learn how to use the internet by doing something amazing, cute, funny, stupid, silly like all the shit we used to use the internet for (was in middle school for the limewire, myspace/xanga/live journal/flickr and high school for height of tumblr era, start of ig, snap, etc.) i miss THE PEOPLES internet … i hate the megacorp internet we have now 😫 FUCK FASCISTS
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🥲i 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
Rec
😃i am (early?) gen z so i was very much a child during this period
with that said, don’t 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 “left” 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 wasn’t just a casino with a mid fps attached to it. amazon had yet to completely conquer the earth. the government kind of worked. i don’t think i would go back because i’ve been spoiled by the sheer volume of amazing things that i have access to today and i do think we’ve made some solid sociopolitical progress, but there are definitely some things i miss
with that said, don’t 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 “left” 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 wasn’t just a casino with a mid fps attached to it. amazon had yet to completely conquer the earth. the government kind of worked. i don’t think i would go back because i’ve been spoiled by the sheer volume of amazing things that i have access to today and i do think we’ve made some solid sociopolitical progress, but there are definitely some things i miss
Jul 20, 2025
Rec
🎭Every 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.
I played so many games on CD-ROM on a clunky beige monitor attached to a giant tower running Windows 98–a lot of my parents’ 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 upon—I 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 Kohl’s dressing room when I was like 12 and crying as I tried on increasingly larger pants sizes because my butt wouldn’t 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 couldn’t 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 wasn’t 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 wouldn’t go back and my nostalgia is usually only in passing. This is controversial but I don’t 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 so…
I played so many games on CD-ROM on a clunky beige monitor attached to a giant tower running Windows 98–a lot of my parents’ 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 upon—I 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 Kohl’s dressing room when I was like 12 and crying as I tried on increasingly larger pants sizes because my butt wouldn’t 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 couldn’t 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 wasn’t 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 wouldn’t go back and my nostalgia is usually only in passing. This is controversial but I don’t 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 so…
Jul 20, 2025
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Jul 2, 2025
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🌾everytime i log on and see my web user homies posting, i be like 👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 bonjour! or whatever the frig belle sings at the beginning of beauty and the beast 🥲 like i saw @MARXINISTA mornin post and i was like GM 😇✍🏼👋🏼 <3
Jul 8, 2025
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👎@TYLER
please let us be free from the commodification of the data generated from our social, whimsical, and sincere, free expression
the sincerity of this app is because it’s different from those other apps :/ why do we need metrics on how we socialize? 😮💨😮💨
i’m curious as much as i am sad about the decision to make the star count visible. is that what its proper name is? or are we calling it likes? 👀
please let us be free from the commodification of the data generated from our social, whimsical, and sincere, free expression
the sincerity of this app is because it’s different from those other apps :/ why do we need metrics on how we socialize? 😮💨😮💨
i’m curious as much as i am sad about the decision to make the star count visible. is that what its proper name is? or are we calling it likes? 👀
Apr 23, 2025