Things people did in the 2000s

1. Put phone in an empty pint glass to amplify the music

2. 9/11

3. Insert a memory card into their gaming console that would invariably fail early on

4. Watch "The King of Queens"

5. play Dance Dance Revolution

6. Listen to The Strokes

7. Buy music for the last time

8. Got away with murder

9. Dane Cook

10. Salvia

11. drink Zima

12. say "wow, the 80s were 20 years ago" unironically

13. share music on KaZaA

Watch flash videos.
Invade Iraq.

yeah the flash videos have not aged well

16. Visit homestarrunner dot com.

17. Start posting on "I Love Everything"

18. collapse housing bubble

19. Read web comics

20. Listen to punk rock compilation albums about how much George W. Bush sucked.

21. let their Tamaguchis die

22. Fight in the great hipster wars

23. Get new music recommendations from Ultragrrrl.

24. Join ILX

25. Download and hoard thousands of MP3s

26. Be racist, except ‘ironically’.

27. Buy a map

28. Had their Nextel phones loudly chirp and someone start talking in the middle of a meeting.

29. Wear novelty eyeglasses on New Years Eve that spell out what year is coming next

30. Called things "gay"

31. Pollstar.com to look up upcoming concerts

32. Have kids, get married

33. Buy shitty "tie-in" DVDs that took place between the first and second films in a series as a cash-grab

34. Tubgirl

35. argued about when centuries begin

36. Homemade episodes of Jackass on someone’s dad’s video recorder

37. Enjoy the novelty of setting up a digital queue to be sent DVDs by mail.

38. Jenny McCarthy's flatulence

Print out directions for long journeys on Google Maps

(39.)

40. Read Slashdot

41. Be born without their prior consent, to parents they didn't choose, into a world that was totally fucked up before they arrived, so it's clearly not their fault, and it's all just so unfair!!

42. Make a phone call when a simple text message would have sufficed.

42. Spend 5 minutes composing a relatively short text message via T9

44. take a picture with your phone, which looks a bit like you took it while on a rollercoaster

45. Had utopian ideals about the internet.

46. While still using the work intranet.

47. Get their news from Comedy Central

42. Spend 5 minutes composing a relatively short text message via T9

T9 was faster than touchscreens :(

48. Watched dvd extras, including entire directory's commentary audio

49. Smell what bars really smell like for the first time

50. Could be reached at hax0rz✧✧✧@hotm✧✧✧.c✧✧

Phew, good thing it got censored straight away.

51. buy a cassette tape with a headphone wire hanging out of it so they could trick their car's tape deck into playing an ipod.

52. Traipse around town with a discman in their oversized pocket.

53. watched seasons of a TV show one episode at a time, at one-week intervals, over a 6-8 month timespan

51. buy a cassette tape with a headphone wire hanging out of it so they could trick their car's tape deck into playing an ipod.

― John Cooper of Christian rock band Skillet (map), Wednesday, May 19, 2021 11:33 AM (six minutes ago)

still works better than Bluetooth!

lol i was using this method until 2014, when my car with a cassette deck died.

54. Spending insane amounts of money to buy cheap trucker hats that looked exactly like every other trucker hat except they had the name of a late motorcycle mechanic and artist on the front.

fucking hated this decade

(forgot to include part of that description, should read "of a late, racist, possibly neo-Nazi, motorcycle mechanic and artist")

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

55. Unironically used the catchphrase, "that's hot".

56. Show some buttcrack

never out of style

nikka costa

57. WORLDSTAR!!!!!

58. rap was all like "plinkity plinkity"

59. EBaum's World

60. Thought "All your base" was the height of hilarity.

YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO SURVIVE MAKE YOUR TIME.

All your base (are) belong to us 👾 https://t.co/brwNKJ8wrh

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 19, 2019

61. Instant messaging

62. Got a gmail address

63. Got a Facebook account

64. Thought George W. Bush was the worst

65. Read The Daily Kos

66. Dump Hotmail

67. Became HTML masters so they could sync up an animated background with their MySpace track

68. Clicked on links

64. Thought George W. Bush was the worst

― Clara Lemlich stan account (silby), Wednesday, May 19, 2021 7:00 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

HASN'T CHANGED!

69. Spent £3.95 on a monophonic ringtone of the opening notes of their favourite song which they'd seen in a magazine, subsequently rendering it their least favourite song

70. went to the cinema to watch a film set in a phone booth

71. Log on to Friends Reunited

spend a week downloading Finding Nemo on WinMx

72

73. Flew from one bit of Europe to another for under £50 total

74. Had strong feelings about Pitchfork

75. Were part of a Street Team to rep their favorite band or label

76. Complain about top-posting

77. Covered furniture in silver paint

78. Assumed all conflict everywhere was ultimately about religion

79. Wrote essays to justify why it was OK to listen to pop music

80. Rated poo

81. Googled miserable failure

82. Labeled MP3s incorrectly
83. Download incorrectly labeled MP3s

82. Went to see acclaimed movies like "Juno" and "Little Miss Sunshine" and realized they actually sucked.

85. Play games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero and think that they have musical talent

83(b). contacted people via the messaging function on filesharing services about their incorrectly labeled mp3s

81. Googled miserable failure

wooow this takes me back

86. Ask the important question "Will it blend?"

87. Used ICQ

88. Put an acapella of a rap song over top a rock or pop track and call it a day.

89. Rotten.com
90. going to the Police reunion tour and being disappointed

91. Get really into pomegranates

92. Thought calling christians dumb and doing ironic racism was the pinnacle of satire

90. going to the (band name) reunion tour and being disappointed

93. fall for Balloon Boy hoax

94. created a Friendster account but didn't use it

95. Argue over what type of music bands like My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy played to the point that their genre on Wikipedia was just listed as "Disputed Subgenres"

96. LiveJournal

97. Emailed the link to the Peter Pan Guy's website to their friends.

98. Were impressed by rocket salad

99. Were confused and delighted by halloumi

100. Attended "legendary" noise shows in faraway lofts where 15 people sat on the floor and watched a naked man with a ball-gag hit guitar pedals with his face

101. slide into first

102. Read album reviews by Mark Prindle and George Starostin

103. Got crunk

101a. Felt something burst.

104. Signed up for a YouTube account.

105. looked up the lyrics to a rap song on OHHLA

104. Signed up for a YouTube account.

106. Ask if these jeans made their ass look big, and hope they didn't.

107. Died in the WTC

bummer dude

108. streamed films & TV online without needing to go through a whole load of bullshit, or having to pay for a worse selection

may only have been the case for a few years late in the decade idk

109. Feel lucky to live close enough to a Netflix distribution center that DVDs arrived in the mail in just two days.

110. become a Demonoid ultra 4 life, well maybe not ;;

111. Was amused by rumours about celebrities who are now in jail and/or disgraced for very non-amusing reasons

112. Considered the most ridiculous thing about Donald Trump to be his hair.

113 marched against bush and blair's war in iraq for all the good that did

114. drink the last bottles of Fruitopia

though actually I saw it in the fountain machine at a McDonald's a while back, unless I imagined that

115. laughed at Little Britain; used the catchphrases at dinner parties.

116. Smoked indoors.

117. Thought 128k was an acceptable bitrate.

118. Erratically followed blogs and blog awards.

119: get called a "camper" or a "chain-lamer" by some US teenager on Quake III Arena deathmatch

120. Re-bought the Beatles catalogue on CD and memory stick.

121. Went offline at weekends.

122. got into IPAs

123. Wondered when Eighties revivalism would ever end; wondered how Nineties revivalism could ever start.

124. retired from the public sector in their early 50s with enhanced benefits.

(3 examples in my family)

125. Replaced pub food with a Thai curry menu

126. Started “fusion” restaurants

Weren’t Pub Thai and Fusion 90s trends? I guess they hung around.

127. Noticed that some hipsters were beginning to grow beards and wear trucker hats.

128. Counted the days until Conan O'Brien would take over the Tonight Show.

129. Went to parties where we binge-watched Lost, then hung around for three hours waiting to download the next episode

130. Prat around on rooftops, staircases, and steps aka Parkour

131. Engage Momus in prolonged debate on ILE.

your 123 is a good one mike-t

132. L'd our F'ing A's O!

133. Got annoyed by GAPDY

134. Experience the curious paucity of decent locally brewed beer in London/the entire south east of England

135. Kept the trucker hat on during sex.

136. Awaited the next entry in the Sufjan Stevens 50 states project

137. "holy shit, did you see Bob Saget's scene in The Aristocrats? yes, that's Danny Tanner from Full House cursing and joking about fisting and incest and projectile shitting. I didn't believe it myself until I saw it (in The Aristocrats)!"

138. Traded their latest '320 dubs' with fellow bedroom producers on AIM

139. Googled '2 girls 1 cup'

140. Heard about 4chan

141. Attended midnight release events for Harry Potter books

142. Organized The Room screening parties

143. Voted for shitty centrist governments

What were some things that people thought were funny or incongruous at the time, but we don't think of them being funny now because, in fact, they were the new normal?

144. used Harry Potter book burning events as a pretense to get rid of unwanted copies of The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get

xp Ricky Gervais becoming popular Stateside

And maybe reality shows in general. Remembering the huge popularity of Big Brother's in its first five years seems particularly strange now (and even more so since the pandemic).

145. Thought Bitcoin was a moment's curiosity and that it's hit its peak

things people thought were funny - a whole lot of what now looks like proto-alt-right shit passed for liberal or apolitical at the time

146. Thought "homophobia is gay" was a clever and useful slogan

147. Made the apocalypse that much worse by spending years "debating" whether global warming was even a thing, to the point that more people doubted its existence by the end of the decade than at the beginning. great work everyone

148. Make some hackneyed comment about the rarefied beauty of listening to Coltrane when it's raining even though the only Coltrane you possess is a 128kbps copy of Blue Train in your soulseek folder.

rude. it was my favorite things

149. watched TED talks

150. Thought Malcolm Gladwell was deep.

i keep thinking this stuff is more recent than the 2000s because lol accelerating into old age i guess

Malcolm Gladwell is very deep .. into private healthcare

knew all their friends’ phone numbers by heart.

sorry that was 151.

152. considered internet anonymity a boon, using "screennames" and the like that couldn't immediately be connected to a real identity.

let's not get too carried away though guys. people also BREATHED in the 2000s and you know, CRIED in the RAIN just like they always will.

153. Burned CDs and DVDs
154. Compared results of thespark.com Purity Test with friends

the spark was a big deal!

155. "Metrosexual" discourse

156. Reacted to sports highlights with "are you kidding me?!"

157. described a great party as “retarded”

158. read magazines like newsweek and time in order to comprehend the political and cultural zeitgeist in an easy and breezy way

159. Checked Popbitch and Ananova for the latest “sleb goss”, read Heat magazine ironically.

160. drew mustaches on their index fingers and held them on their upper lip for photos

161. Praised R. Kelly to the heavens and beyond for the genius of “Ignition (Remix)”.

162. Ditched HTML frames.
163. Thought RSS feed readers were the future.

164. Curated blogrolls.

165. Ordered CDs from Hong Kong (CD Wow!) for an even tenner

166. Wept during Obama’s inauguration.

167. Confidently proclaimed that [musical genre/artist/style they were into that month] was THE FUTURE, which meant it was really good - and that this other genre/artist/style was no longer or would never be THE FUTURE, which meant it was bad or irrelevant, and vaguely ideologically suspicious

168. Checked out the "Gossip" page on Buddyhead for latest negative news about the Strokes, Jack White, Fred Durst etc.

i keep thinking this stuff is more recent than the 2000s because lol accelerating into old age i guess

― Chickpeas, Scamps and Beeves (Noodle Vague), Sunday, May 23, 2021 2:00 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

nah ppl are definitely citing stuff that ran into the 2010s

ted talks started in 2006 but my peak awareness of them as a thing was 2012

168 (A). Read reviews on Buddyhead, and wondered when they finally get that Velvet Underground box set they kept said they were gonna trade promos they didn't want for.

169. the Stanky Leg
170. popped, locked, and dropped it

171. The Cha Cha Slide, at bar mitzvahs

172. Rode pennyfarthings

173. wore ed hardy t-shirts

174. We speaked teh LOLcat

1. Put phone in an empty pint glass to amplify the music

― Urbandn hope all ye who enter here (dog latin), Wednesday, May 19, 2021 11:18 AM (five days ago) bookmarkflaglink

175. Made fun of people with smartphones.

176. Randomly insert photos of Colin Mochrie into everything

Xxxxxzpost
The Cha Cha Slide is very much alive and well, overall. Has it lost its traction at bar mitzvahs?

172. Rode pennyfarthings

177. rode those stupid ass "tall bikes"

Xxxxxzpost
The Cha Cha Slide is very much alive and well, overall. Has it lost its traction at bar mitzvahs?

178. cast Sam Worthington

i keep thinking this stuff is more recent than the 2000s because lol accelerating into old age i guess

― Chickpeas, Scamps and Beeves (Noodle Vague), Sunday, May 23, 2021 2:00 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

nah ppl are definitely citing stuff that ran into the 2010s

179. Did a post-Who U-turn on Billie Piper.

180. Thought the era of ideological dogma was dead and buried.

181. Found Boris Johnson funny.

182. Rocked a boot-cut.

183. Thought Twitter was a cute little "Web 2.0" diversion that would probably be fun for a few weeks, until we all moved to the next thing.

BADGER BADGER BADGER snake

Hamster dance

Peanut butter jelly time!!!

Magic Mountain Charlie

<i>Yeah eg nobody thought Bitcoin had hit its peak in the 2000s, 1st ilx mention was in 2011</i>
Well, I'm obviously an outlier, but I had a conversation with a co-worker about this at a place I quit at the very end of 2009. We talked about whether it would be worth buying or mining a bunch of Bitcoin, just in case, and concluded that it was a momentary hype that wasn't going to go anywhere. (iirc the conclusion was based on some mainstream magazine having an article about it, which we figured was peak exposure)

184. Use HTML on ilx instead of BBcode

185. Moonspell = Moonspell

omg

186. Read articles about the “changing powers and influence in the new internet age” from commentators who should have known better, when AOL acquired Time Warner.

187. Played the videos on "enhanced" CD singles, once.

188. Stopped buying CD singles.

189. Vowed never to give up on VHS.

190. Purchased huge rear-projection televisions that seemed to be considered useless old-tech within months.

191. Freddy Prinze, Jr

192. Made "Delgo".

193. Paris Hilton

194. Perez Hilton

195. Flash mobs

196. talked endlessly about 'practicing Random Acts of Kindness'

Related to both of these^ 197. “Free hugs”

I remember seeing those & thinking well I fucking hope so, who’d pay for a hug

And yet Hugs is still incarcerated

huh, i thought random acts of kindness were a 90s thing? when did "random acts of violence" become a news trope?

There was a thing about happy slapping. I take it that was 00ies not 90s.
Not just Tango bursts of colour. Think ad was roughly around same time though wasn't it.

198. Read Stylus Magazine online. RIP

has it been that long? :(

199. Ruined Craig David’s career by saying his name like Craaaaaig David from a bad tv show

who’d pay for a hug

not til later: https://theweek.com/articles/810782/why-americans-pay-hugs

xp I will never forgive britain for that

I felt the same until I found out he was a tory

well shit I wish I didn't know that

regardless the cruelty of so much of this decade's pop culture surely set the stage for so much ongoing bullshit starting with how people literally fucking

100. blamed an international financial crisis on immigrants and disabled people claiming too much welfare

that should be 200 right

101. Freedom fries

202. Bondage burgers

203. Spent a lot of time reading, discussing and coming up with theories about what is happening in LOST

204. having Ja Rule guest on songs

205. Started saying iconic, meta and meme.

When did people commonly start using the word "meme" in the Internet sense? Surprised to find fairly recent ILX threads where they're referees to as things like "image macros".

Also "emoticons"

i hate memes

this site might've had something to do with it?: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memepool

A friend showed it to me and I remember us calling it "me me pool" for a long while.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eix_9ByXcAAxH6Z.jpg

i remember when a boss i didn't like had a poster in her office of a cat like that and the caption "i can haz a cheesburger" or something. i knew that i wasn't going to like where the culture was headed.

tik tok is the apotheosis of memes. it's human beings who have become memes, basically, or have turned themselves into walking/dancing memes. like the pigs at the end of "animal farm," looking from pig to man and man to pig and the differences are no longer discernible.

206. developing a posture that was "anti" certain forms of web culture, like memes and viral videos and stuff

207. Adderall

from the state of internet writing trust me people are still doing adderall

I thought the kitty speak was very creative, there's a good article about it here:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323620982_I_can_haz_language_play_The_construction_of_language_and_identity_in_LOLspeak

Treeship you seem like more of a doge person.

The kind of stuff that went viral on youtube in those days, so much of it was just mocking people who were very comfortable in their own skin. It felt very mean-spirited.

That weezer video was more than just a cute video imo.

It probably shouldn't surprise me that social media serves "in-group cohesion".

most of the 2000s memes / videos were just kind of inexplicable to me, it wasn't just that I didn't find them funny, but also I couldn't work out what was supposed to be funny about them, so yes lolcats but also Charlie bit my finger, all your base, evolution of dance, is this the way to amarillo. Whereas today (I think since vine) everything seems to be both funnier and less of a big deal, and importantly the open mocking / cruelty seems to have fallen out of favour, so


208. posed screenshots of people having possibly fatal accidents, with the word FAIL written at the bottom, and emailed them to their friends.

Yes, there was a site for those! Failblog.org
P sure it was part of the icanhascheezburger.com family of websites.

yeah, still seems to be there (I won't link it) - I have been there twice before, to tell them to fuck off for making a meme out of a photo of a truck hitting some cyclists, and to tell them to fuck off for making a meme from a gif of an Indian man touching a railway power cable and being electrocuted.

209. Draw an S. Then a draw a different kind of S. Then add some consummate V's and maybe a big beefy arm.

210. Get really excited about a song that's just about a ton of pop culture figures fighting each other.

211. Something Awful

209. Draw an S. Then a draw a different kind of S. Then add some consummate V's and maybe a big beefy arm.

I'm gonna need a picture here.

The antisocial energies unleashed by internet anonymity were still visible and green then. They’ve been sublimated now in various ways, but they’re still there.

Like social media, I believe, bans hateful and abusive and bigoted content. Which is great. But you get a lot of bullying by means of social ostracization instead. Or like, old school abuse by anonymous accounts who are like these little swarming demons with frogs in their avatars.

And it all has a political character now. The internet today is weirder than it was then.

I'm gonna need a picture here.
http://www.hrwiki.org/w/images/thumb/f/f6/sbemail58picture2a.PNG/800px-sbemail58picture2a.PNG

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/029/992/trogdor.png

I even hate typing the name, but there was that site "Fat Chicks in Party Hats", was that part of SA or icanhascheezburger? Which reminds me...

212. Read Seanbaby

Yeah. Very glad that stuff is taboo now.

Accidentally answered my own question, it was part of the Seanbaby site network.

213. Read tucker max posts and laugh about them. These were like deeply misogynistic “humorous” accounts of his sexual exploits. I remember finding this grotesque but feeling unable to express this to my high school classmates which shows how the times have changed.

Also gross to see that dude is still getting paid:

In 2017, Max ghostwrote Tiffany Haddish's memoir, The Last Black Unicorn, which was released in December 2017 by Simon & Schuster and debuted at number 15 on The New York Times best-seller list.

214. the stinky feet project
215. the stinky meat project

216. Used Facebook apps

217. Used Onion Personals to look for love.

217(A). Used other dating/personals sites tied to popular media pages to look for love.

218. Thought Borat was a progressive film.

219. yelled "this is Sparta!"

Also gross to see that dude is still getting paid:

In 2017, Max ghostwrote Tiffany Haddish's memoir, The Last Black Unicorn, which was released in December 2017 by Simon & Schuster and debuted at number 15 on The New York Times best-seller list.
― soaring skrrrtpeggios (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Thursday, May 27, 2021 8:48 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

he did a self-help book about being a good husband a few years ago - the guy that wrote the secret did too, around the same time. funny to think of the man who owned both of their original books in 2000 and then those two books 15 years later.

this man exists and walks among us

The only person I never knew who actually read and enjoyed Tucker Max irl was a girl I briefly dated back in 2002. She kept talking up this "really funny" guy who wrote about his "crazy partying", but never remembered his name. One day she forwarded me a link to his site and I was very much, "huh... you... like this?".

she wasn't like other girls

talk about the one that got away

wow Kim - 216 really feels like a deep cut. hard to believe!

re:217(A) - anyone remember Sparkmatch?

vaguely, but that reminds me...

220. Visited Makeoutclub(dot)com

xp 154. Compared results of thespark.com Purity Test with friends

yeah there were the tests, then they launched sparkmatch and it was massive for about a month, then suddenly they shut it all down and it turned into sparknotes, no idea what went on there, they really blew an opportunity.

According to wikipedia, it somehow morphed into OkCupid.

Wow thespark. Crikey

met my wife on thespark

221. Made jokes about how great and powerful Vin Diesel Chuck Norris is.

222. Tweeted via SMS.

223. set up your twitter account with your phone, moved abroad, had your phone number reassigned to someone else who gets a notification every time someone @s you on twitter and apparently is quite annoyed about this, started getting messaged from friends and family asking why you keep telling them to "fuck off" on twitter.

224. Citing that "Maybe I'm too much of a feminist..." when criticizing the outcome of Ross & Rachel in the Friends finale.

225. Took all kinds of 'fun' surveys to find out things like which Disney princess or Star Wars character they were, or where they fell in a simplified quadrant of political beliefs, while innocently delivering up scads of personal information later used to directly target and manipulate not just their buying habits, but their votes during elections.

I still do that. Shit is fun.

96. LiveJournal

and before that, #226. diaryland

and:
227. watched/made/shared a ytmnd
228. voted for or bought something on Threadless
229. owned at least one of those American Apparel zip hoodies

230. played an 'escape the room' flash game

231. watched the GI Joe re-dubbed toons ie "PORK CHOP SANDWICHES"

I (re)watched those a couple months ago! was much easier now that they're on youtube or whatever rather than having to get them from a friend or

232. napster

(or kazaa or whatever came after it)

Morpheus
Gnutella
MusicSteal
HereBeTrojans
Mislabeled Mp3s

"judas priest" discografia descargar rar

209. Draw an S. Then a draw a different kind of S. Then add some consummate V's and maybe a big beefy arm.

Was gonna say #16 probably covers this but on second thought we should probaby redo this entire thread as a list of Strong Bad references

meedly meedly meedly meedly

Tonight!! Wooh-man! We'll be driving down Spulveda, with the T-top down Tonight

Jugga jigga wugga?

Ma-i-a hi
Ma-i-a hu
Ma-i-a ho
Ma-i-a ha-ha

baleeted!

As many fule kno

233. Shazam songs via an SMS
234. Cheat at pub quizzes via an SMS
235. Mephedrone

236. Know all of the lyrics to popular City High song “What Would U Do”

chap all those hit pretty hard

2580, right down the center. SEND

a shazam sms sent in 2003 is responsible for me knowing the name of On A Ragga Tip

i wonder occasionally is there is a log of that text, on an archived tape backup somewhere

there could be a double dose of hauntology from 20 year old phone texts, first the ghost of the person you used to be and no longer recognise and even more sadly old friends or acquaintances that are actually gone from this earth now.

Planned obsolescence is good now

237. Was a useful person for knowing HTML

things people thought were funny - a whole lot of what now looks like proto-alt-right shit passed for liberal or apolitical at the time

238. This one, again

yeah that one sums up a lot for me

re: old phones, i actually did recently power up (before finally saying goodbye to) my first cell phone, a solid little flipper owned from 2006 to 2009. most of the txts were from the late end of that period but even that time gap brought a real whoosh of complex feelings about the person i used to be and the friends on the other end (mostly still very fond friends though in less frequent contact).

i have that even just for 2021. a friend died recently and my last text to him, after he couldn't make it to a kids-and-playground meeting, was "hope to see you next time"

i'm sorry to hear that, CT.

Death and the digital world is a weird thing. I'm of an age where I have quite a few people in my phone contacts who are now dead. What do I do, delete their numbers? It doesn't feel quite right. Ditto Facebook friends.

239. Said that The Simpsons isn't as good as it used to be but it's still one of the best shows on television.

240. Were excited that Family Guy was coming back from cancellation.

241. patted Seth McFarlane on the back for moving forward, doing the work and fighting like fuck to defy the FCC

242. patiently counted down the days/hours/minutes/seconds until the Olsen twins' 18th birthday:

https://i.imgur.com/ctgqkjz.jpg

(ironically, of course!)

Celebrity Boxing

243. Tried really hard to get Firefly uncancelled*

*Joss Whedon has obviously since been cancelled

2580, right down the center. SEND

― Tracer Hand, Saturday, June 5, 2021 5:37 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Dialed down the center with 1-800-CALL-ATT?

Bob Weaddababyeetsaboy

TIL 1-800-COLLECT still exists

when Mr. T and Carrot Top dominated our commercial breaks

lol apparently a 6 minute collect call on 1-800-CALL-COLLECT is like 42 bucks now

a strange return to the early 20th century, when long distance was insanely expensive and barely used, and provided largely so AT&T could claim it offered some special public benefit justifying its monopoly ownership of local phone companies. who is the target market for ludicrously expensive collect calling in 2020?

prison inmates

ugh. god our society is fucked.

that makes sense. sadly.

244. Watched movies with Tobey Maguire and/or Elijah Wood in leading roles.

It was neat when they told Tobey to act natural when filming on a street, and so he did finger guns, went into a club, did a line of coke and started dancing on a piano in Spider-Man 3.

244. be reminded of the existence of Sven Goran-Eriksson and Lembit Opik on a regular basis and not just when this happens

I can't believe this is real https://t.co/8t9wVfZac5 pic.twitter.com/r3VlPQ0VtG

— Patrick Maguire (@patrickkmaguire) June 8, 2021

lol wtf!

Speaking of the 2000s, I interviewed Opik when I was a journalism student in 2003, and found him super inspiring and likeable. I spent the day with him on a secondary school visit. Even then he was undoubtedly a self-obsessed goofball, but the kids were rapt with him, and he gave a speech about the importance of getting involved in politics, campaigning, not being apathetic, etc. that was as inspiring as anything I've heard on the subject. His subsequent career as a triple-z-list celeb, Sunday Sport columnist, and holder of bad opinions is an utter embarrassment, obviously, but also a real waste of a talent that probably wasn't that apparent to many, even himself.

245. visited Stileproject for proto-edgelord vibes

246. extremely relatedly, thought 'pimps' and 'hos' were funny concepts to roleplay as middle-class white people

lol #245

247. Often thought about, but couldn't quite explain why "Stuff White People Like" felt extremely racist while trying to be the opposite

248. Saved Karyn.

249. Bought string quartet tribute albums

250. Consider 256mb mp3 players with LED displays serious cutting edge shit. More of a self-own here because I was well behind the curve on music players.

251. Shagged Ariane

252. Laughed at cross-dressers. ("I'm a LADY!")

Of course now all the disablist/anti-trans/racist blackfacing elements are indefensible now, but really they should have been at the time as well. Not that I'm getting on my high horse here. I only boycotted it on the grounds that Lucas/Williams are horribly unfunny performers and absolute despicable wankers to boot.

253. Not automatically lol when you thought about Joseph Kony and the Lords Resistance Army

lol @ 251, had completely forgotten about that particular gem

254. Ran a spyware scan on your parents' computer and removed bonzibuddy.

(Today: help your parents use spying apps from google, apple, facebook)

My in-laws once asked me, in the 2000s, to look at their computer because it was “going slow”. Literally a full half of their Internet Explorer window was bullshit toolbars, because they always clicked Yes to everything.

374a. used physical tickets to get into events

471b. lots of fast food places didn't take debit cards yet (at least in the early 2000s)

258. Yelled "Whazzup!" at each other

259. Yelled "Nice one Brova!" at each other

xpost I have a friend who said that to me a week ago, and she's only 25 - she woulda been like, a toddler when that came out.

but she didn't know it from the original commercial - did it appear somewhere else recently?

260. "Bud...Weis....ER!"

260b. worried that the frogs screensaver was a virus
261. still used a screensaver

262 sent people links that hijacked their screensaver with pr0n/frightening old ladies/space invaders.

471b. lots of fast food places didn't take debit cards yet (at least in the early 2000s)

― cancel culture club (Neanderthal)

In the UK there was still a smattering of smaller food outlets and shops that didn't until the pandemic!

honestly I kinda wish nobody did, I'm more cognizant of how much money is leaving my bank account if I'm physically handing someone currency rather than a card.

263. Crunk
264. Melidramatic Popular Song

265. still waited for The Avalanches to release a new album
266. gave up on waiting for My Bloody Valentine to release a new album

267 said that it was “like buttah”

from an snl sketch that ran from 1991-1994

268 started threads with thread titles like

When will y'all realize that Marissa Nadler is the nu-gothique schnizzle?

ok look my memory isn’t what it was

269. Improv Everywhere

1. cut a hole in the box

271. This is the thread where you roll up the rim to win

272. Your mum

273. Adult kickball leagues

274. Go to internet cafes while travelling.
(boring option, but probably the most 00s thing for me)

hahaha I did that a few times

275. Lost the connector dongle for their PCMCIA modem card

276. downloaded entire albums on their T1 connections, said it was ok as the 'artists make more money off of touring anyway'. had kids that now say the same thing in 2021.

277. asked ilx what "GPRS connectivity" meant, feeling that it was somehow the future

New Apple Lust Objects

274b and often spent half-hour waiting for the dial-up to connect and frequently lost long emails as the whole thing crashed.

278. Said "shit the bed" to express surprise

279. Were really impressed by street art

280. Played electronic music shows with a desktop and CRT monitor

280. Finally accept that Marissa Nadler is the nu-gothique schnizzle

282. Were Poxy Fules Who Turned Back

Chill down my spine from 282.

283. Were constantly anxious that a terrorist attack might happen.

^ i was thinking abt this yesterday with the florida condo collapse, when i realized that none of the media coverage i've seen included the phrase "the authorities have ruled out terrorism as a likely cause" which was standard boilerplate for so long, even when completely obvious and unnecessary, and i had a vivid feeling of the W years being well & truly over

Huh I only just noticed that now after you pointed it out.

284. showed off their whale-tails

285. were clean shaven

286. Liked James Franco

287. Took some things on the internet at face value.

288. Vaguely assumed that at some point airport security would get back to normal.

Definitely a conspiracy headed by Big Duty Free that we still can't take liquid on.

Has someone already identified flashmobs? I do remember them as a depressing content-free 2000s phenomenon.

Thinking about them now, I think the single most irritating thing was participants' self-satisfaction - as if they were doing something significant

that continued into the 10s as well.

the Harlem Shake was the first one that actually pissed me off.

Ha, I was actually talked into participating in one in the very early 00s near Liverpool St maybe where we all had to wear cricket whites for whatever reason. It was insanely boring.

looking back now its weird to realize that it peaked as a fad so long before the era of widespread smartphones and video-based social media. i remember hating flashmobs, but cant recall how i actually saw them. pictures on flickr? clips on local news?

Yeah that is odd - in my head they're linked to Facebook but actually a few years too early to have been in reality.

I think maybe there'd be the occasional slightly jokey item about them on national news.

I remember reading about them on cnn.com

289. Vonage

290. Listened to mashups

291. Say "Bunch of arse"

292. Said, out loud, things like “that’s teh cool”.

293. Maintained profiles on both Friendster and MySpace until it was clear which one was gonna really take off.

294. Got knocked for a loop when thefacebook.com showed up to the party.

295. Had no idea what 90% of the electronic music producers your record collection looked like, or had any knowledge of their views / breakfast that day / hot takes on current affairs etc.

*in your record collection even

reaction videos are the flash mobs of the 2020s

298. A young generation moved into adulthood, boldly declaring their key tenet: ‘We eat ass’

Teenage dirtbags

300. Googlewhacked