The Internet I Grew Up With Doesn’t Exist Anymore

Here we are. The part of this post I recall most vividly. The mid-2000s were a
phenomenal time in my personal history, as they were my transformative years. As
it relates to computing and the internet, this means that the mid-2000s were the
years of my utmost exploration, exploitation, and emancipation.

Where do I even start? Perhaps we start with the state of the internet and what
exactly was available online. Perhaps this is triggering for certain readers,
and I apologize if it is, but it is the way the internet was at the time.

If you wanted to see gruesome videos of executions, suicides, or the pain
olympics, all it took was a single search and your search engine would happily
return any results relevant to the words you typed.

If you wanted to share information over the internet at this point, you probably
had an email from a site like AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, or your ISP
(Roadrunner, anyone?). Additionally, at this point, webmail clients were
extremely popular and most users would launch the webmail clients from their
providers to participate in email.

Those of us who were cool used things like MSN Messenger, AIM, etc. to chat
quickly without having to use an email. You could even use little pictures that
provided emotional reactions for you! Oh my goodness, what a time.

Beyond chatting, the next big thing coming in the digital space was gaming. At
this time, it was seen as perhaps a silly side-hobby for some. While there may
have been some money in it for a few select games, most were not profitable –
they were created for other reasons, such as genuine intrigue in mechanics,
users’ fun, and curiosity.

Games and game companies like Runescape, Miniclip (8 Ball Pool, Agar.io, Doodle
Army), Club Penguin, Wizards 101, and more dominated the scene in the mid-2000s.

Beyond gaming, this was the age of users learning how to launch their own blogs,
vlogs, websites, and more.

For example, let’s look at GeoCities (1994-2009) and Tumblr (2007-present).
These websites rapidly evolved the internet’s landscape, as they offered a free
method for anyone to deploy a website or blog.

Imagine being a young person, or a high schooler, or a college student, or an
adult in 2009. You have access to the internet and an interest in something out
there in the world. You do a quick search and find a page related to it on
GeoCities or Tumblr, leading you down a hyperlink rabbit hole.

If you were properly motivated at this time, you may wonder: “How do I do this?
Can I create a page like this?” The answer was yes, and it was easy! A few
minutes later, you could have your own site. There were few, if any,
restrictions on what you could publish online.

This could lead you to learning HTML and CSS, as many users wanted to customize
their sites, which generally leads to users discovering the freedom of owning
their own sites. This included things like mail signatures, avatars,
forum-specific usernames and more.

The end result? Everyone could have their own corner of the internet.

There was space for everyone and it was distinct. You could tell, both visually
and otherwise, that a site belonged to someone specific. It was property,
individually owned and updated by a human somewhere on Earth.