Rec
🕹️
things were easier (because i was a kid) but it seemed so simple. where are all the frozen yogurt restaurants? why don’t people have cds anymore? bring back limewire and online chat blogs and weird websites and silly graphic t-shirts and chunky sneakers and twee and hipster styles. i miss collegehumor and buzzfeed. but i bring the nostalgia for myself back every day by dressing like i stepped out of a rhett and link music video and listening to modest mouse and metric and the yeah yeah yeahs. i love my digital camera and my dvds and volunteering at my university radio station.
recommendation image
Jan 20, 2025

Comments (2)

Make an account to reply.
image
I started high school in 2010 and i have so much love for that version of myself. my partner’s internet dads were rhett and link, mine were dan and phil which is such a loving self-read. take me back 😭
Jan 21, 2025
1
image
I still watch Rhett and Link's Good Mythical Morning. My high-school crush introduced me to them!
Jan 20, 2025
1

Related Recs

Rec
💭
I saw somebody else respond in this format so I’m going to provide my misc memories from being 6-16 in the 2000s:
• frying an egg on the sidewalk/asphalt/car hoods with kids from my apartment complex because we were convinced it was that hot out • watching SpongeBob seasons 1-3 on repeat • watching mtv after school and always having a talk show or pbs queued up on the “previous channel” button so if my mom came home I could quickly look like I was watching Ellen or Oprah or cyberspace all along (mtv shows were so raunchy) •you had to watch vh1 for anything music related • catalogs!!! i would do all my “scrolling” in limited too catalogs and then dig through racks at tj maxx to find similar things my mom could actually buy •teen mags for the quizzes • driving around with my mom listening to her cds while she smoked and ran errands (honestly this still holds up today/ I keep it alive in my own ac-less suv) • beanie babies and being called out if you had fakes • listening to radio Disney on my boom box before bed •riding my bike aimlessly when I had nothing else to do •walking to the gas station with my $5 allowance and buying Sobe, now n later, tgi Friday potato skins, and cherry vanilla coke •I also got in trouble a lot for wandering off or smoking rolled up sticky notes or vandalizing storage units with “brat girl” or something so y2k •I remember my outfits so well…. Many cheeky graphic tees, ringer tees, layered tanks, peasant skirts, stripes, capris, platform sneakers, chokers •redesigning my MySpace every weekend •changing my aim screen name with the seasons •being bullied by boys in middle school, over aim or getting prank called •when I got a cell phone I never remember charging it, but I do remember trying to break my Nokia brick because I wanted a razr or a chocolate, but it was truly indestructible •listening to mix cds in friends cars as they began to drive because nobody had an aux cord or Bluetooth •2008-2010 we’re really dark so I’ll spare you more details
3d ago
Rec
🎭
Every new piece of technology was so exciting, because of the monoculture every new release felt like an Event, everything was shiny and glittery and in fun colors. Listening to music for the first time on an iPod was crazy. Getting a portable DVD player to watch Buffy the Vampire slayer DVDs on long road trips made me feel like I lived in the future. Seeing digital cable for the first time where it would display the programming schedule with descriptions blew my mind. 
I played so many games on CD-ROM on a clunky beige monitor attached to a giant tower running Windows 98–a lot of my parents’ friends were educators so they were constantly giving me new ones to play. Neopets was my life and I loved exploring new sites. I remember frequenting many websites that were just lists of other sites lol. I did also spend a lot of time playing outside and just imagining things. Everything you see on Buzzfeed 90s kid remember the 2000s articles is accurate. The high of optimism when Obama got elected after eight years of Bush was unparalleled!
That said yeah the forced conformity was incredibly stifling and social groups were still cliquish (though this was starting to dissolve by the time I got into high school). Things that would make you cool now would lead you to be mocked or become an outcast so it was nice that emo kids existed because they were a lot more accepting of idiosyncrasies and quirks. Gender nonconformity was frowned upon—I got my hair cut short in eighth grade and was made fun of by so many people, and my male gym coach called me sir!
The beauty standards were insane and also so narrow. I remember being in a Kohl’s dressing room when I was like 12 and crying as I tried on increasingly larger pants sizes because my butt wouldn’t fit into anything I tried on and wondering why I was cursed with this body.
HONESTLY the hardest thing for me was that I needed glasses and the only ones that were really available at my local glasses shops were very ugly and nerdy (or if there were cool ones they were designer and cost like $600) and you couldn’t just buy them online so I was walking around looking like Harry Potter for most of my childhood and early adolescence and feeling very insecure about it.
The good thing about personal style, culture, and taste is that i truly had to figure it all out on my own by seeking out and curating sources of inspiration, or by word of mouth from other people, rather than having inspiration algorithmically fed to me.
I remember going trick or treating in the mall after 9/11 because some parents including my mother were very paranoid that something (?) would happen? My mom was very paranoid in general because of her own childhood experiences and seeing all of the news stories about child abductions but I wasn’t helicoptered and my parents would let me walk around the neighborhood with my friends as I got older. We spent so much time just walking from strip mall to strip mall and like loitering at Barnes and Noble lol.
So it was a mixed bag really but I wouldn’t go back and my nostalgia is usually only in passing. This is controversial but I don’t have any fondness for physical media other than vinyl records because I remember just thinking CDs DVDs and VHSs sucked and I hated when they would get damaged. When I realized that I could acquire any digital media I wanted on the internet it felt like the world was my oyster and I never looked back.
You know what though actually I just remembered how much cheaper everything was and I got mad so…
Rec
💚
• Shrek
• Watching Pimp My Ride and Scarred on MTV and seeing actual music videos
• My older sister’s Girl Scout troop performing a dance to a backstreet boys song at the mall
• Going to warped tour
• Cutting up my older sister’s old Seventeen magazines to make collages
• The premiere of iCarly
• Having a family computer where you’d get on the internet and then get off and not think about it the rest of the day
• Waiting on each Harry Potter book to be written, and waiting on each movie to be made
• JLO’s butt was considered gigantic for some reason
• Bush administration
• Burning cds and decorating them with sharpies
• Seeing Panic! At The Disco in concert during their peak
• Spending bunch of time playing outside
• The world seemed less noisy and more optimistic back then. People just lived instead of performing life for social media.

Top Recs from @paperpendragon

Rec
recommendation image
🌝
i made him
Jan 20, 2025
Rec
🍃
not in a stars wars way!! but just as a little secret. there’s a tiny braid under here and nobody else knows
Apr 11, 2025
Rec
👄
i love a person with teeth like a half transformed werewolf