What do you remember from the classic internet era (2007-2012)?

[KittenNoir]

I remember playing all the best games, Club Penguin, Star Doll, Fantage, Neopets and so on!!!

 

[amemome]

Numa Numa amd Hamster Dance were big in my post-Yahooligans era. AlbinoBlackSheep, Sambakza(spelling???)'s There She Is! Flash animations, Newgrounds, Real Ninjas and its spoofs, Hellpoemer's Naruto animations on DeviantArt, etc. I had a lot of fun.

 

[DaCoSim]

Heck, no, take me back to 2001 with the dial up AOL screech!!!!

 

[ali.di.magix]

First thing that comes to mind is the cringe memes lol. Trollface Era was just something else.

I remember flash games like Star Doll, Moshi Monsters, any miniclip games etc. and playing them on computers at school

I also remember classic YouTube with Charlie the Unicorn, Gummi Bear, nigahiga, Shane Dawson etc...also a cringe era lol

 

[Chris]

All I remember about 2007 specifically was being mad that Electronic Arts decided to merge their The Sims 2 forum UK with other existing forums and create one big EA UK community forum. TS2UK had been my internet home for years and while I made some new friends through the move (lots of FIFA fans, one I even met in person in 2009) it was never the same.

 

[Kitsuragi]

did anyone else other than me play OurWorld? i was obsessed with it from 2011-2013. i played it a few more years between 2016-2019 for the nostalgia, then it shut down because the company didnt wanna moderate it.

i really miss virtual spaces like that. avatar dress up and "rooms" to interact with rather than JUST forums.

 

[-Daydream-]

did anyone else other than me play OurWorld? i was obsessed with it from 2011-2013. i played it a few more years between 2016-2019 for the nostalgia, then it shut down because the company didnt wanna moderate it.

i really miss virtual spaces like that. avatar dress up and "rooms" to interact with rather than JUST forums.

I remember playing it for a little while. I would mostly play Fantage and Monkey Quest. I miss virtual worlds too…

 

[Hyoon]

i'm not sure if i remember the specific year correctly for all these things but hopefully i'm close

- using skype/msn before discord was a thing
- everyone using facebook
- finding anime episodes on youtube split in parts
- watching og youtubers like nigahiga, jenna marbles, pewdiepie, michelle phan, superwoman/lily singh
- looking for random/funny answers on yahoo answers
- play mini flash games on disney/nick or barbie/polly pocket/bratz dolls
- being obsessed with tumblr
- forums being way more active
- using gamefaqs for those long text only walkthroughs if i get stuck on a game
- joining random chatrooms which now that i look back on i really shouldn't have been doing cause there were a lot of creeps who tried to talk to me
- limewire (if u know u know)

 

[Hypno KK]

The fact that something from 2007 is considered "classic" is making me feel old. I'm going to crawl into a corner and die from old age now.

 

[Khaoticnoize187]

nigahiga's how to be ninja now thats a gem and ofc nico nico douga with the mad vids and also memes originating from there now thats a classic.

 

[Neb]

I remember during that era YouTube videos had much less production quality, but more channels were passion projects rather than the endless sea of shills trying to make a living on the site like everyone else and complaining about YouTube not paying them enough that is today. Half of the gaming YouTubers I watched back then either cursed every five seconds, casually dropped spoilers for video games, made tasteless jokes, or ended up doing something awful that got them in trouble later. The other half either quit or are still making videos and struggling to get the attention they used to get despite making much better content now.

I remember playing flash games of varying degrees of quality on “coolmathgames.com” at that time. Runner 2 and the Papa’s games were great, while many of the others were mindless or intentionally unfair. I never thought of making an account back then, so I never got to save my progress.

 

[chocovelvetcake]

I remember playing some games on coolmathgames.com back in the early 2010s era. I was still in elementary school at the time. My favorite cool math games were the Papa's game series, Run, Civiballs, and Snail Bob to name a few. I also used to play a couple of Angry Birds games on my phone. Some of the earliest games I remember playing back then were Purble Place, Diner Dash, Peggle, and World of Goo to name a few. There was this one game series in particular that I loved playing as a kid, and that game was Sushi Cat. Sushi Cat spawned 6 sequels, with the latest game being released in 2018.

 

[rosefairy]

Algorithms weren't as intense for sure. I didn't have to stress about watching one video on YouTube and then having only that one thing appear everywhere afterwards. I liked being able to discover things I wouldn't have ordinarily sought out in the recommended bar on the side of videos I watched-- now everything's so carefully curated to recommend things I've already seen or know about. It didn't feel like everyone was trying to sell you something. Not as many people started or ended their video asking for likes and a subscription. (That's just an observation though, no shade to those who do it. I know it's a part of those creators job in today's world.) I adored the classic speedpaint videos that were more common in that era-- no one spoke or made intros, it was just digital painting from beginning to end with music in the background. I learned a lot from those videos!

That said, YouTube took forever to load back then due to the internet connection being shakier where I lived. I also adore the long-form content that's more common today! It's nice to have something on in the background while I work where I don't have to constantly stop what I'm doing to switch to something else.

I think there were more spaces for artists to flourish and meet other artists in their niche. DeviantArt was a lot more fun / well-rounded and Instagram wasn't a video and algorithm driven app drowned in advertisements. (I tried Instagram again a year ago and felt undiscoverable until I made reels with trending subjects and music... it burned me out so fast, haha.) Theft was alive, unfortunately it always is, but AI "art" and scraping wasn't a thing to worry about. I'm always on the lookout for sites that actually feel safe and productive to share my art.

I also remember way more kid friendly sites and games. Club Penguin, Cartoon Network (I loved the Powerpuff Girls snowboarding game!), Neopets, Barbie, and even the Polly Pocket site haha. My sisters and I stumbled on this one site called Roiworld that was filled with these gorgeous dress up games-- I used to wake up early to play a few before school. A lot of what I remember is probably earlier than the window mentioned in the title of the post, more early 2000's, but it was fun to be a kid in that era!

 

[Doo]

Barely anything. I only really started using the internet a year or two after 2012. I did used to play Moshi Monsters online around that time though. Oh, and I used to play cartoon games based on children’s TV shows.

 

[mewp0ka]

probably right around 2008....or when we had first gotten our family pc and i would waste hours on sites like barbiegirls.com, among the other sites that contained flash games. heavily remember that one online world nickelodeon had.

OH! also u.b. funkeys! i owned a couple of them and was able to use them online.

 

[VernalLapin]

When wordle was only the name of a site where you could make word clouds XD

 

[thatawkwardkid]

Yes, but I especially miss the old YouTube era, especially 2009 to mid-2012.

 

[Dim]

Mutuals who actually spoke to one another. Nowadays everyone just wants to cause drama on social media.

 

[Giddy]

omg you guys reminded me of DeviantArt - I vaguely remember going on there, may have posted one or two small drawings; I think I spoke to someone on there for a bit?
And one thing I really loved that I found there, that I just remembered, was someone created this short South Park animation, something to do with some spooky creature or SOMETHING. It was so good. I might actually log back on to see what that was.

At primary school, we did have computers (I miss the old big back computers) and this was something they used for us to learn more maths, and I probably had no clue what manga meant back then XD But I think you also had your own profile character you could dress, the more coins you got from getting correct math the more yuo chould shop?
Not too sure as this was the only images I could find. Pyramid Panic being my abolsute fav

Feast your eyes on the first time I ever watched Pewdiepie's videos:

This was the first video I ever watched of him, my cousin was watching him at the time I was there.
I also watched really old Markiplier, but I can't remember exactly what I watched from him first.

I think I mentioned girlgogames and moshi monsters before, but I also really enjoyed playing in the Pokemon Community fourms, they had this game RPG style that you could hunt any pokemon in the grass, even shinies - or was that another pokemon site I played on?

I was also introduce to ALOT of anime, anime, that maybe I shouldn't have been watching (Higurashi, when they cry), an anime called Another, Ouran Highschool Host Club, Naruto, I tried to watch Bleach. Soul Eater!
Also found the bad side of anime too, I think that was the only negative side to things back then for me.

 

[TN4U]

Oh, let's see what I remember from YouTube's golden years...

• Remember when you could customize your channel with backgrounds and neon colors and stuff? I can't believe how long ago they took those creative freedoms away from us. The only things you can "customize" on your channel nowadays are your banner, introductory video and playlists. Definitely not as fun now as it was then.
• When I first started using YouTube (shortly before their five-star system was phased out), I watched LEGO stop-motion shorts of varying quality. This was well before the movie came out, so nothing was super-spectacular. The earliest series I remember was one that mimicked episodes of Cops, using Miami Vice music. I liked that one.
• I remember watching a video series about these guys microwaving random stuff in their garage, sort of like Will It Blend? but with microwaves. I recalled them going through several microwaves, and one in particular lasted for over two years or something. That only broke due to something exploding with a great amount of force.
• There was yet another series that was live-action Super Mario Brothers, but it was hilariously bad. Most of the time, the things they did had nothing to do with the series, and no, this isn't a continuation of the 1993 movie we're talking about. I believe the series is long gone now because the creator ended up disowning it.
• Reading the comments on Justin Bieber's "Baby" music video. Remember when it was the most disliked video on YouTube? Ah, good times. Let's not forget the video for Rebecca Black's "Friday" either.
• Billy Mays YouTube Poops. I still miss that guy.

There's probably more in the back of my mind, but these seem to stand out the most.