If you were around in the 90s, you probably remember the Y2k Bug. Everyone thought that the end of the world was coming because many of our computer programs were set to read the year date with only the last two digits.
People really believe that there would be huge system failures if our software and hardware read the date 00 as 1900 instead of 2000.
Kids born after the year 2000 can't even imagine what the world was like before smart phones became computers in our pockets.
Since there's a whole generation who doesn't remember much of the early 2000s, we thought we might take a trip down memory lane and school these kids on what it was really like. Some aesthetics from the 90s were carried over, some technology never made it past 2003.
Redditor BtownBrelooms asked:
"What is something that was used heavily in the year 2000, but it's almost never used today?"
Here's a great dose of Y2k nostalgia for you.
Devices just for music.
"Any sort of dedicated music-playing device, before that just became a part of your phone."
- Confusionator5000
"RIP my mini disk player."
- Mikebot3000
"RIP Zune."
- Redditor
"RIP Creative Zen Touch. You were a wonderful green brick."
- HELLOhappyshop
"I kinda miss my iPod shuffle. The small thin brick one that literally had no buttons."
- Peng_win
"For me, that was portable CD players which replaced portable cassette players (mainly, the Sony Walkman). MP3 players came almost immediately afterward."
- CriminalSpiritX
The file sharing, social networking software.
"LimeWire."
- FRB2992
"Giving me flashbacks of desperately trying to hear the preview of the song while it downloaded to make sure it was the actual song and not 'my fellow Americans.'"
- Legitimate-mistak3
"Or the Dj yelling in the background."
- Vapirate04
Re-writable CDs.
"Re-writable CDs. I used to burn so many mix CDs after downloading from Napster, BearShare, LimeWire, FrostWire. Then my mother would call, disconnecting the internet and I would have to start the download all over again. Except one file wasn't an mp3, but a virus. I would just reinstall windows before my mom got home as we saved every picture and document on a zip drive.....then those fancy Jaz drives."
"Also Adobe without a subscription."
- Sh*ttinwithmykitten
"And the praying to the 'buffer overrun' gods during every burn..."
- iguana-pr
"I would borrow CDs from my Library and then burn a copy to keep."
- tootsie404
Long processing times for downloads.
"Download Managers."
"Start the download right after Mom goes to bed, wake up before her to pause the download and disconnect the dial-up connection, resume tomorrow night. Repeat..."
"A week later, you're playing Counter-Strike."
- Laserwulf
"And now you can download the torrent in like 2 min."
- ZarafFaraz
"The perspective is staggering. A 1080p 30fps video using old 2000 codecs like MPEG-1 at high quality is like 40mbps instead of modern h.264/265 being like 8."
"A YouTube video of that quality takes like 2 minutes today at that quality. In 2000 on dial up using contemporary codecs would have require 165 hours."
- Shandlar
Spiker Colorz.
"Colored spikey hair gel."
- AdamoclesYT
"Bro, I am still waiting for the day frosted tips make a comeback."
- ShowMeYourTorts
"Honestly man the kids these days look straight outta the 90's, though most of them seem to think it's original. Wouldn't surprise me if frosted tips are next."
- thricetheory
AIM messenger.
"AIM and msn messenger."
"Bringing back even more memories of the late 90’s early 2000’s rushing home to fire up the dial up and start chatting with the same friends I’d already spent hours talking to that day."
- Boodagga
"'Wanna Cyber?' God. We were awful."
- icanbeafrick
"A/s/l."
- levi_verzyden
And ICQ.
"ICQ."
- DamnedMonkey
"Couple of years ago, I had a number come into my head. Recognized it but didn’t know where from. For over a year it kept bugging me. Was it my college enrolment/password? Number for someone I worked with when I worked overseas? Not a clue for the longest time."
"Random convo with a friend about old memes and things we miss about the early internet days, and I just blurted out “its my f*cking ICQ number!” with no context…"
- Squallypie
Giant, rear projection TV.
"If you had a big screen TV it was probably a ridiculously thick rear projection TV."
- ParoxysmAttack
"My parents can’t get it out of the house."
- CristyTango
"My Dad Busted it apart to get it out of the house."
- And1mistaketour
The sound of Dial-Up.
"Dial-Up."
"weeeeeeeee WOOOOOO_OOOOOO_"
E E E E E E E EEEEEeeeeee
"eee"
"eee URRRRRRRRR""BEDULUDOLEDULUDOLEEPEEPEEP"
"R R R R R R R R R R R R RUMMMMMMMMMMMM"- Martini_Man_
"Is it sad that I miss this sound? Reminds me of logging on age 15. Midnight till 6am was my ISPs off-peak and was the only time I could get my internet fix."
- trev2600
Websites had a specific aesthetic.
"Spinning under construction gifs on websites."
- starkiller_bass
"Remember when most websites had a hit counter on them?"
- starkiller_bass
- emtag
These Low Effort Jobs Have Surprisingly High Salaries | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
Have you ever worked one of those jobs that paid you to kinda sit there? If you have, you know the joy that comes with watching the entirety of Breaking Bad ...Computer mice with a ball.
"Computer mice with a ball:"
"My friend had one of the first Microsoft IntelliMouse , which did not use a ball."
"As I recall, it was the first laser mouse without a ball that was commercialized in a popular way. It was released in October 1999. So in 2000, most mice were with a ball, and slowly faded away."
- fmaz008
"Remember having to clean the ball? Who even knows how that much gunk got in there in a relatively short time."
- FloydEGag
Oh, Blockbuster. How we miss you.
"Blockbuster card."
- larrythetarry
"I live a half-hour away from one. Granted, it's the last one, but still..."
- zippyslug31
"It’s surreal walking around that store. Closest thing to time traveling I’ll ever get to do."
- pegleg_1979
"Damn. I miss blockbuster."
- NOTZawp
Geocities.
"Geocities, neopets, livejournal, kazaa."
- papaweir
"Geocities was so powerful for the time. I used to build my website there, steal the html and use it for my own domain. This was pre-social media. If you wanted to share your weird goth poetry and fuzzy webcam selfies, you had to have your own website. Using the steeling html method for years eventually taught me how to write it."
"Also, for a cross over episode, I stole the html from the pet 'painting' page from Neopets, uploaded it on my geocities, tinkered with the code and was able to log in and paint all my pets for free. Baby h4x0r. Those were the days."
- j-u-n-i
"For those of you who miss the old days, neocities is a free hosting service where you can put up simple websites. Nothing fancy, but still very awesome."
- MarqueeSmyth
And Neopets.
"Neopets don’t die though, I logged in after a long time and my Neopet was starving, so I fed it a piece of the omelette and he said 'yuck I don’t like omelettes' so I logged off and let the sassy little bat starve for another 10 years."
- goblinsexologist
"Neopets was the reason my dad buckled and got us DSL internet... because I once spent the entire Saturday on Neopets and he wasn't happy with the phone bill that month."
- GingerBeardicus86
Blue eye shadow was in.
"Blue eyeshadow. You could always tell when a junior high school aged girl finally got the okay from her parents to start wearing makeup. She'd show up at school everyday for the next month looking like a blue panda."
- blickyjayy
"Butterfly hair clips and I believe the white eyeliner were huge then too."
- HotIronCakes
"Kids today with thousands of YouTube make up tutorials at their disposal don't know how we suffered."
- 44morejumperspls
Smoking inside.
"Indoor smoking. My young-ish kids marvel at the fact that people used to sit in restaurants and smoke."
- TurdFergDSF
"I remember gold foil disposable ashtrays at burger king."
- J_Hitler_Christ
"I remember going to friendly’s as a kid for breakfast or dinner and they asked if we wanted smoking or non-smoking with ceiling fans blowing everything everywhere."
- soline
VHS tapes.
"VCRs."
- Murtamatt
"Tape rewinders!!"
"BE KIND, REWIND!"
"I liked the ones that had the form of a sports car."
- xtracto
There was no GPS.
"Maps or Mapquest."
- Ocean927
"My wife calls Google maps MapQuest if we need directions she'll tell me to MapQuest it on my phone."
- deadlymoogle
"Printed Mapquest instructions!"
- surlycanon
"World Wide Web."
"The term 'World Wide Web.'"
- No-Sheepherder-2896
“'Visit us at h t t p colon slash slash w w w dot p b s dot o r g.'"
- Bilbo_nubbins
"Information Superhighway."
- wagu666
Generation Z will probably never fully understand the struggles and joys of the budding technology and wacky fashion of that time.
Though, before you know it, these kids are going to be saying the same thing about the next generation.
And the cycle continues.
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