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Oh, the 2000s. People were celebrating that the world didn't end in 1999. Flip phones were all the rage, low-rise jeans were the hottest thing in fashion, and tweens and teens were listening to pop-punk on their MP3 players. Maybe it's just the nostalgia talking, but the British, for example, think life was best in the 2000s.
Although I was a tween in the noughties, I don't really see it. But other millennials would like to argue that this was the case. The people in this thread came to the defense of the '00s, sharing what life was like back then, including the good, the embarrassing, and the bad.
Bored Panda reached out to the person who started this thread, u/1dfk000. They kindly agreed to have a chat with us about the 2000s and what things people will probably miss from the 2020s. Read our conversation below!
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#1
I knew the phone number of everyone in my circle off the top of my head.
u/1dfk000 is a fan of the 2000s. They tell us that watching TV shows from that decade like One Tree Hill, The O.C., and Despereate Housewives was what inspired to ask older Millennials about what life was like back then. "I like watching older 2000s TV shows," they said.
"I wanted to ask people about their experiences in that time period to know if it was 'accurate.' The netizen tells us they were born in 2005, so they haven't really experienced the decade in its full swing. "[I] genuinely have about six memories from the late 2000s," they told us in a message.
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#2
I was excited for the future. I'm 43 now. I am no longer excited for anything :|.
#3
We used to go over to someones house after school and just sit on the computer. Like 4-5 people just playing flash games or going to weird, random sites they had heard of and watching terrible content.
Now a days, idk, maybe kids do a similar thing with their phones and send each other media. But I'll always remember those days, and knowing when that mother f****r Adam got on the computer that I was about to see some weird s**t.
Frazzled Mama 4 months ago
We used to have YouTube parties back in the early days of the platform. Classic memes like "Charlie bit my finger!"
The thing that fascinates the netizen the most about the 2000s is the lack of social media. "Just the concept of not constantly consuming media and not having a device on you 24/7," they say. "I virtually grew up with a phone/iPad on me at all times and social media was also definitely very mainstream and developed compared to the 2000s."
Every decade has something people miss; whether that's poofy hair from the '80s, '90s flannel, or LAN parties from the 2000s. When we started chatting with u/1dfk000 about what things people could possibly miss from this decade, they it'll probably be social media. "Or cars that run on gas," they also add.
#4
I can tell you this we had a lot healthier relationship with the internet when it was confined to a single point, the home computer.
#5
It was a simpler time. We hung out at the mall, played video games like Halo and Grand Theft Auto. Social media wasn’t as big, so we actually called our friends on the phone to make plans. Napster and LimeWire were the go-to for downloading music.
#6
Music was huge. We had pop-punk bands like Blink-182 and Green Day. TV shows like Friends and The Sopranos were at their peak. We didn’t have YouTube yet, so we’d watch music videos on MTV or VH1. Kids today don’t know the joy of getting a new CD on release day.
Firstname Lastname 4 months ago
Heard Sum 41 had a newer song on the radio last night. Pop punk still hits the same as it used to for me.
"I think social media may become less prominent since a lot more people are starting to crave interactions with people rather than communicating through their phones," the Redditor says. "I also think fuel-powered vehicles will become less common and people will probably start becoming nostalgic for it and missing them."
#7
The internet wasn't overloaded with an abundance of the dumbest people on the planet. There were a lot of idiots online, but nowhere near as many as there are now. Also significantly less people worshipped politicians. Prices for most things were way cheaper than they are now. Music was really popping off. Cancel culture wasn't really a thing yet, and you could actually be mildly offensive online without pissing off a million people with blue hair. Life was honestly pretty good in the early 2000s.
#8
The 2000’s was a lot of fun. Actually, to be completely honest, all of my life has been fun. I was born in 1981 so I got to experience the 80’s to a degree, the 90’s as a kid and the 2000s as a young adult.
All of those decades had some great things about them. I would not have asked to live in any other period of time. I got to experience the simplicity of life and the nuttiness of current time, both somewhat comfortably. The changes of technology didn’t scare me, and the independence of being a “latch key kid” was also something I got to experience. I don’t think I really answered the question though…but life was fun.
Owen 4 months ago
I was born in '88 and I have loved seeing technology change and grow with me. My first console was a NES with Donkey Kong. Now I have a PC that can run anything currently available. Watching the internet grow up and the introduction of smart phones... it gives a lot of perspective.
#9
Internet was a massive web of interconnecting sites for any interest and hobby. You could browse thousands of sites without repeat.
Now it seems like 5 websites filled with screenshots from the other sites and unlimited s****y opinions (including mine) stated as fact from strangers on the Internet.
BoredPossum 4 months ago
Now Internet has become boring. BP can entertain me but the rest is just for finding information quick and then go offline.
#10
16/f/cali u?
u/Godzira-r32:
My whole life changed when I experienced MSN Messenger for the first time. And getting the screen name from a girl you had a crush on? Man, there was nothing like it for 13-year-old me.
#11
A thing I see people rarely mention is that being someone who didn't really use the internet wasn't frowned upon. I knew lots of people who just used their home phone and mail for everything and did fine even. If they needed a computer you could just go to a library.
LaserBrain 4 months ago (edited)
Can you imagine telling someone from 2000 about scrolling for hours of wasted time on Bored Panda and reading other people's comments and writing your own
#12
Let’s see. I turned 18 in 2000. Cell phones were starting to get really popular, where most people would have one. I got my first one in 2001 and seemed late to the party. They had this thing called “roaming” though, where you were charged ALOT extra if you were out of network or calling outside the hours in your plan (cell plans would often have free nights and weekends, perfect for a young person, but not a business person). Texting wasn’t really a thing until 2005, and it seemed like a strange concept. But that soon became really popular. Cameras on phones took really bad pictures. Disposable cameras were slowly dying out, and digital cameras were what most people used.
Fashion was flair jeans, messy parts until the side part craze in the late 2000s. Low rise pants were extremly low, like one inch zippers, everyone wore rubber thong sandals, sometimes with a wedge (those are coming back). Layering tank tops and shirts on eachother was very popular. Designer jeans were super popular, brands like 7 for all mankind, Juicy Couture, Rock & Republican, True Religion, Citizens of Humanity. There were a lot of cargo pants and cargo shorts for guys. A lot of people shopped at Abercrombie & Fitch, Holluster, American Eagle. Ugg boots became wildly popular for women in 2003, I managed to nab a pair of classic shorts, but Uggs were sold out across the country.
MySpace was THE platform in 2005-2007, and then Facebook started taking over. MySpace had a lot of bugs and the fake profiles were overwhelming. Although I loved how I could design my own MySpace page and got really into it. Facebook didn’t have that options. Facebook did have a things called “apps” that you could decorate your page with to an extent (like one was a cork board with little buttons you could choose from called pieces of flair like Office Space) but it wasn’t the same.
I didn’t have internet in my phone for the entirety of the 2000s. I had to be at home, or go to a coffee shop. We printed out directions from a site called Mapquest. No google maps.
CDs were still a thing, but some people started to get “MP3 players” and iPods. There were also music sharing platforms like Kazaa, Limewire etc. you had to be careful what you downloaded though. Kazaa gave my computer a zillion viruses. I also once spent 24 hours downloading what I thought was Snoop Dogg Doggystyle album, but it ended up being porn.
Oh, and this TV streaming s**t and Roku, HULU, Netflix? Hell no. There were regular TV channels and cable. A boyfriend of mine climbed an electrical pole and got us free cable. Netflix did exist, but it was a DVD you’d receive in the mail, watch it, and send it back in the mail.
There wasn’t much direct deposit either or online bill paying. You get a paper paycheck that you would take to the bank. Bills were paid with checks that you put in an envelope and send in the mail.
There’s more, may come back and edit this.
#13
We had dial-up internet at first, which was super slow. Kids today don’t know the struggle of waiting for a page to load. We used to rent movies from Blockbuster. And if you missed an episode of your favorite show, you’d have to wait for the rerun.
#15
Everyone had a f**k ton of DVDs, but people also burned music CDs. If you had money, you had an iPod. Gas became expensive during the 2007 crash, but in the early 2000s, it was close to a dollar per gallon. Cash for clunkers hadn't happened yet, so cars were ridiculously cheap. You could pick up a cr**py one for a few hundred dollars, and a lot of the time, if you were mechanically inclined, you could work on it yourself to keep it running. The Internet started off cr**py but quickly got better. As that happened, online gaming took off. Prior to that, if you wanted to game with your friends, one of you had to haul your PC over to the other's place for a LAN party. Teen movies glorified drinking and partying, so a lot of cheap beer was consumed.
LakotaWolf (she/her) 4 months ago
In my early 20s, when my boyfriend and I first started dating, I made him a hand-made wooden DVD cabinet. Sawed, sanded, fitted and nailed the boards together, stained the wood, and sealed it. Then I painted the two of us (as wolves, of course - my avatar is how I look as a "wolf") on the top. On the sides, I painted his college roommates and their girlfriends (also as animals of their choosing - I can't draw humans). Boyfriend and I have been together for 23 years and he still has that DVD cabinet XD
#17
Two things that were really different:
1) New episodes of shows came out at a specific time on a specific day, so you’d plan your week around it, then talk about it the next day at work/school or plan to watch it with someone every week. Sometimes I’d even call friends during commercial breaks to discuss what was happening in *that episode*
2) The **incredible** amount of fat-shaming and fat jokes that were so pervasive in 2000s society. It’s really hard to communicate effectively because even though people are definitely still d***s about it, and the media and social media still focuses on/idolizes thin people, there were so many magazines constantly recommending diet tips, gossip magazines negatively commenting on stars who took a single bad photo (“[starlet] gained 20 stress pounds!”) and regular people would compare diets as a normal social interaction. You also **never** saw clothes in sizes bigger than L in non-plus size stores. It really is a different world in that regard.
Mariele Scherzinger 4 months ago (edited)
I was in highschool when the movie "Titanic" came out. I had a subscription for Rolling Stone magazine which I paid for with my pocket money (I felt so grown up about that). When I read the Rolling Stone review for the film, which - for about 50% of the text - joked about Kate Winslet's weight, basically saying the Titanic sank because she was too fat, I decided to cancel my subscription. I went so far as to write a letter of complaint to the editor, the only letter of that nature I have ever written.
#18
As someone who has now lived in 4 decades, the 2000s *by far* has had the worst fashion so far. I see you younger generations trying to bring some of it back and you all need to stop it.
#19
Humanity peaked at Windows XP.
#20
I worked at a cellphone store 2006-2008. Was a crazy time as we had like 60 different phone models with like 12 different operating systems. It was actually a difficult job because you had to know a lot about each individual product. Anyone remember BlackBerry? The motorola Razer? Nokias? The TMobile Sidekick? Those hundreds of similar candy bar phones? Ringtones? When low rez camera phones became a thing? T9 texting? I remember texting and driving was more common and actually a lot safer because with T9 it was muscle memory and you wouldn’t have to look at the screen to text.
#21
Texting was $0.10 a message.
#22
Born in 1989, so most of my childhood and development happened in the 2000s.
I got in trouble with my parents for racking up $40 on our cell phone bill because I was texting my crush too much. Couldn't call her until after 7pm either because that's when free minutes on Sprint started. Speaking of cell phones, it was actually really controversial in my parent's social circle when they gave me a cell phone when I was 12. It was still almost unheard of at that point, and I even got in trouble for bringing it to school, even though I kept it in my backpack.
Also, I miss that gaming seemed so much more social. It was weird and frustrating if you played with anyone who didn't have a mic. All the angsty AIM away messages that quoted some s****y Midwest emo rock bands. And man I miss AIM.
Everything just overall seemed simpler. Technology is a wonderful thing. I've made a career out of it. But I do miss how much more simple it felt like when it was still evolving.
I look at it with nostalgia, but the events in the 2000s also setup millennials to have a hard time in our adult years. 9/11 flipped the world upside down. I graduated from high school into the 2008 Great Recession. And for a lot of us trying to make financial progress through the 2010s, a lot of us had that progress wiped away in 2020 during the pandemic. So a lot of people in our generation has become justifiably bitter and pessimistic.
#24
I remember when working from home meant 4 phone lines for me, one for home phone, one for work phone, one for dial up and one for a fax. Hard to believe that faxes are still a thing though.
#25
Simpler in many ways. News was less partisan. Politics was still focused around issues. The internet was opening up the world to people, not consuming our entire lives. It was still on our computers and not our phones. We watched Family Guy, Jackass, South Park, Chappelle's Show, Jerry Springer. We loved movies. Our cartoons were cool. There wasn't so much going on that you couldn't keep up. Most of us were all on the same page of pop culture because it was still coming through TV. We watched a lot of TV, but when it aired. Or DVDs.
Green Day and Blink 182 were at their peaks. MTV was a big cultural trendsetter but was on it's way out. Our cultural ennui toward suburban life was peak. College was expensive.
Final Fantasy was in its best era. Following 6 and 7, 10 came out and we all lost our minds.
Social media was AIM messenger, using Facebook to see where the parties were at and who was single, and dating had to be done in person. No doomscrolling, ragebaiting, daily addictions.
Your favorite bands were affordable to see. Unless you were seeing like NSYNC, it was $20 shows in some divey place with some band you heard on MTV.
And if you wanted to hang out with people, you called them up or still just knocked on their doors.
Overall, way way simpler.
Certainly not every single thing was better. We did massively change the course of history with the 2000 election in terms of politics and climate. 9/11 changed our internal surveillance state and set us off to war for two decades. From that came partisan news. The internet targeted individuals more clearly with advertising and really started dividing worlds and making our realities different. Shared reality started going. Corporate conglomeration was happening. The billionaire class was emerging. World of Warcrack came out and the era of creating truly addictive content was just kind of cracked there. It wasn't always about making great stuff, but the stuff that made you hooked with your eyeballs. And people were wearing Ed Hardy, Affliction, and spray tans. Toward the end we had a massive recession that saw financial greed nearly destroy our economy. And a lot of that is still happening today. And we still had to print our maps with Mapquest or just memorize s**t.
Oh, but the joy of leaving the house and never being bothered until you came home... pure bliss.
#26
Pretty awesome as a kid tbh, I have fond memories of spending entire days skating all over town with friends and then going home and playing the original SKATE or Fallout 3 till midnight.
Also, moviegoing was so much better and more fun. Before Marvel picked up its steam, the big blockbuster event that everyone would go to the movies for was Pirates of The Caribbean.
TotallyNOTAFox 4 months ago (edited)
Movies also had better quality in terms of story and narrative - Nowadays it's either just a CGI spectacle or so forcefully diverse and careful to not offend anybody at any circumstance that the writting suffers from it (since Marvel was mentioned...)
#27
We ranked our friends 1-8 on Myspace, hung out at the mall, wore makeup 3x too dark for our skin tone, we loved the Snooki Poof, anything Abercrombie (or Hot Topic, depending on your vibe), watched a lot of Ebaum's world, used AIM and cryptic away messages, watched TRL, wore low rise jeans, doubled up on polo shirts with popped collars, and spent a lot of time outside.
#28
I was in my 20s for the whole decade- finishing college, my first job, meeting my future wife, etc. My view on it:
The two defining events were 9/11 and the 2008 financial crash. In retrospect, Bush vs Gore and the Supreme Court stepping in to give it to Bush was the defining event of the decade and maybe the rest of our adult lives. So yeah, much of the decade was spent in the shadow of 9/11 and the Iraq war. The revelations about torture, people slowly realizing they'd been lied to etc.
And ofcourse the housing bubble where people I graduated with bought apartments for like $30k and made insane money, while others bought in too late and were ruined financially especially people who got adjustable rate mortgages. It's hard to explain how easy it was to get financing, how much people were approved for. I was making like $40k out of college and was approved for well over $200k, which at the time could get you into a pretty decent place, at least where I lived. I received good advice and locked it down with a fixed rate mortgage for a rowhouse in a gentrifying neighborhood...made like $800 payments for a solid decade before selling and having enough for my next down payment. Silly how one decent decision can really put you on your way.
On the flipside, the bubble bursting, the resulting financial crisis and the s****y job market afterwards was terrifying., people were super worried about being laid off, people graduating into a crisis and having their future prospects screwed because they couldn't get a job out of college. The painfully slow recovery.
Obama's campaign is hard to describe. People were so sick of Bush, so excited for Obama...he was such an incredible, inspiring speaker, the prospect of a black president was so thrilling. In today's cynical environment it's really hard to capture that feeling.
The last burst of rock, all the awesome indie rock and garage bands, people losing their minds over Strokes and White Stripes. The rise and fall of Napster, so many great shows.
People covered tech and internet pretty well- AIM, PS2, Goldeneye, message boards, blogs, early Facebook, Fark, ebaumsworld. It was fun, slightly taboo, uncensored, mean, cheeky, random. But you still had alt weeklies, people still used online to plan to hang out in person. Mix of analog and digital that will never exist again.
Geoffrey Scott 4 months ago
Bush v Gore, 2 men who knew the potential of unrest and, though disappointment from Gore, let us know the system worked. I was pleased to see Jon Stewart was not cowed by Pres O. "So...affordable care act" (cheers from audience).."why didn't you do something about the waste, fraud and abuse before rolling it out?" Pres O looked as if Stewart broke his favorite toy. Loved Pres O, but he NEEDED that, to let him know he was not the messiah.
#29
There was a period of time where "there's nothing on TV" was a real thing. The 2000s brought an end to those limited choices. You went from channel surfing dozens of TV channels, to having access to hundreds, with on-demand programming gaining traction.
The feeling of having things at your fingertips really started to happen in many aspects of everyday life. Cellphones became smart, and mainstream. Media piracy platforms that offered you anything you could imagine with the low cost of potentially destroying the family computer. The music was amazing. The movies were amazing.
Being a teenager in the 00s was pretty awesome. The use of computers was still new enough that we were look to as being experts or computer whiz kids if you had even a basic mastery of them.
The future looked promising. Part of it was just growing up and learning more about the world - but it did seem the carefully crafted "the adults know what they're doing" illusion got ripped away with the dotcom bubble, 9/11, and the housing market crash.
#30
One thing that shocked me, back then if you liked anime in school you got beaten up or bullied.
When I went back to college, my gen z classmates openly talked about and watched anime. I even got called a hipster and a boomer for saying I wasn't currently watching anime.
Feels kinda unfair. I had to hide that s**t for years. XD.
What do you think ?
Alexa Saltz 4 months ago
I met my husband in Hell 1999. Actually we were playing Diablo. He tried to PK me, so I took his ear and closed the game. I still have his ear.
Alexa Saltz 4 months ago
I met my husband in Hell 1999. Actually we were playing Diablo. He tried to PK me, so I took his ear and closed the game. I still have his ear.
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