Internet Nostalgia

[Blanc]

A thread for my homies who grew up on early 2000s internet (or even before that!) I just wanna talk about stuff that was our ‘normal’ from that era that now really may not feel so normal! Flash games, obscure sites, pet sims what have you. What was important in your digital footprint from the internet’s earlier days.

A few things of mine (besides Neopets) were that I would watch music videos through TokyoPop’s old website because for some reason to younger me it felt safer than youtube. LMAO. I also played a bunch of niche dressup games on a now defunct site called Gamegecko. Myscene and Barbie.com of course were also staples.

I also remember posting my old Pokemon fanfics to this site that Nickelodeon used to run but they nuked it (thank god) so now all my cringe 13 year old fics are lost to the aether… Somehow I didn’t get into Gaiaonline. I did get a little into TinierMe though. THERE WERE ALSO THESE WEIRD LITTLE GUYS I BRIEFLY PLAYED WITH CALLED UB FUNKIES!!! They had some online game!! (It wasn’t very good) LMAO. I also remember playing golf a ton on Candystand.com. Please tell me I’m not the only one who remembers that site.

 

[Aozora]

Hmm, pretty much anything before social media for me lol. I remember as a kid spending a lot of time of fansites and forums, and I guess AIM, although I only ever used it to talk to people I knew irl.

I also played liked flash games (addictinggames.com, lol), and I remember being fascinated by sites like ebaum's world (which was pretty much nothing but shock images, where it asks you to find something in the image, then something 'scary' pops out.

I used to read webcomics like XKCD sometimes (which I think is still around), and also does anyone remember Klay World?

 

[Battista]

Cartoonnetwork.com was my go-to. Shockwave games galore (Flash before Flash) and Cartoon Orbit took way too much of my time. I wish more people remembered Orbit in particular because I'd like to reminisce.

Besides that, spent a lot of time on message boards too. I'm pretty glad most of their content has been lost to the aether because I was pretty cringe. Glad there's still places like Bulbagarden around, much prefer this over traditional social media.

 

[Okido]

*cracks knuckles*
Off the top of my head, some websites that I enjoyed wasting my time on back in the day were: Club Penguin, Scratch, Fantage, Chicken Smoothie, AdventureQuest/AQ Worlds, DollDivine, Ninjakiwi (where I played BTD4/5, and their lesser-known game Meeblings), Webkinz, Animal Jam, Blogspot, xat, Miiverse, and of course Pokemon.com (mostly during the Global Link, Dream World, and Pokémon Trainer Club days, back when there were still games to play and wallpapers to download).
This isn't all of them, and I could go on and on about any single one of these, but to prevent this post from becoming a hundred miles long, I will not do that.

As for something more specific though, did anyone else play the GROW series of Flash games (GROW Cube, GROW RPG, etc.) on EYEZMAZE? I swear I must have spent years of my life replaying those over and over and over again trying to get every outcome. They were and still are incredibly charming; a lot of them have now been converted to HTML5 on the creator's website, but when I installed Flashpoint recently I still immediately beelined for GROW Island, lol.
I also have fond memories of some Shockwave and Java games, but their names are utterly escaping me other than like, Diamond Mine.

I also remember posting my old Pokemon fanfics to this site that Nickelodeon used to run but they nuked it (thank god)

Wait wait wait, you're not talking about Quizilla, are you?!?!
If so, I used to literally have that site bookmarked around 2011 because I LOVED trawling through the stuff on there everyday. I don't think I ever posted anything to it myself, but it is scary to think that there may be a non-zero chance I could have read something you wrote at some point. Still baffles me as to why they absolutely wiped the whole thing when it closed a few years later... I think that was the first time I ever felt true injustice over a site being shut down out of the blue. Sigh.
(And speaking of Nickelodeon, I also recall the first message board I ever used being the Nick Forums, which seem to have COMPLETELY vanished without a trace now according to Google. I joined because I wanted to talk about Avatar: The Last Airbender, and that my friends is where I first learned what the word "shipping" meant LOL)

And finally, it kinda goes without saying, but I still long for the olden days of YouTube. I feel like I probably, like, shouldn't have been on there at the age I was, lmfao — but it really influenced me more than anything else did. I absolutely would not be the same person I am today, with the same tastes and sense of humor and sheer creative drive, if not for the hours of fun I had on there watching every AMV, and animation, and let's play, and YTP(MV), and Newgrounds/Nico Nico Douga reupload that I could find.
...hey, remember you used to be able to customize your channel's color theme and background image, too?!

 

[lisianthus]

Scratch

Webkinz, Animal Jam

I have found my people..

Honestly I didn't think I was going to post in here because like, I didn't really go on the internet much, if at all as a kid, but! I remember Webkinz and Animal Jam! (AJ in particular!) Not that I remember very much about them per se other than... idk a song about kangaroos that is still stuck in my head to this day LOL. I think I was a penguin and maybe a wolf(?) at different times back then? I swear to god I just had, like, a core memory unlock LMAO

Miiverse, and of course Pokemon.com (mostly during the Global Link, Dream World, and Pokémon Trainer Club days, back when there were still games to play and wallpapers to download).

OH YEAH POKEMON.COM... god I played those games on there soooo much, I'm sure if you showed me them now I'd recognize a few! Also it was REALLY nice back when they showed some episodes of the anime, I used to just sit down and watch them aaaallll the time omg, that's how my knowledge of it somehow isn't limited to BW onwards LOL. Come to think of it, I did play the online TCG a little as a kid too, although I wasn't really... well, I was small so I wasn't competitive.

Going to show my age here (this might not be early 2000s GOMEN) but I remember playing a lot of coolmathgames and hoodamath during elementary school LOL. I liked Run and the Papa's [insert food store here] games, and there was a fun golf one too... and Khan Academy's programming section was a really fun time-waster, similarly to Scratch now. And Hopscotch too, that was really fun for making games and such. (I remember doing that myself actually!)

At any rate, I am going down my very small memory lane LOL. I didn't really go on the internet much as a kid, at least I didn't venture very far from the safety of pokemon.com, but I remember doing a few things here and there I suppose.

OHHHH and the sonic flash games???? Did anyone play those??? I guess I played Pokémon ones too but...

...did anyone ever play Pokémon Tower Defense by any chance??? I just remembered this but omg I used to love that game omg

Okay I guess I did more on the internet than I previously thought??? LMAO this is a very great thread as always!

 

[ekatheparas]

I'll put a few

1. Doll hair coloring advertisements
2. Pokemon.com (when it still had games and the trainers thing,,ah, sad, fond memories)
3. Coin eating moneybank
4. Terrifiying things I probably shouldn't have watched cutting sight peripherals??? seriously??? what is wrong with me??
5. Anpanman on youtube
6. LEGO.com when it still had the really old layout
7. how to make complicated robotic item
8. AJ and Clubpenguin (rest in peace my many accounts)
9. Robotic dolls (Video never again found,,it was really cool if someone finds it it looked kind of like this
10. Spoiler: sorry it looks awful, I drew it with my mouse

    

 

[Zexy]

I did start off later with the Internet, about 2007, and mostly played World of Warcraft : The Burning Crusade. I did not really understand how much more I could do with it for a while, the really different part compared to later was that I felt a bit resentful towards Pokemon and did not try browsing sites about it at all, because I never got a DS and Diamond/Pearl (parents thought it would look "too kiddish" to still play with a handheld outdoors, they did not mind me using a PC indoors).

I remember the first mentions of Facebook in the news and most of my family being like "eh it is just a fad like myspace it will die down". I remember the first mention of Skype in the news and us being in awe videocalls were now possible. I remember the first mention of Twitter and everyone saying "eh it will not become like Facebook". A bit later there was the FarmVile craze and a site called Gamers Unite where we would just add random strangers as Facebook friends who could see our full names locations etc. like it was nothing. Even my kinda cyber security paranoid father (these days) did not really think twice of it back then. Silly innocent days.

Eh, after this phase of pulling back from Facebook games (where my entire extended family could see what I was doing), quitting WoW, hitting puberty, making the decision to start searching about Pokemon again, and touch screen phones/other social media getting more popular, "innocent nostalgic Internet" never felt the same again.

 

[InfiniteBakuphoon]

As a child of the 90s, I have, well… not really nostalgia for that long-bygone era of the internet, but rather just lots of memories, both good and, um, not so good, haha. There are things that I appreciate about that era that I sometimes, like just the simplicity and innocence of it all, I guess, before its rapid corporatization and overt social media focus. But then there are other things that I’m very glad are in the past, such as dial-up… ugh, that was so bad! Youngsters who never had to use AOL or some similar kind of service to connect to the internet, you all have no idea how good you’ve got it now, haha. To get an idea of how horrific this all was back then, imagine only one computer being able to use the internet at a time, all via an often very fragile and finicky phone cable; no Wi-Fi or anything like that! Then, you’d have to spend at least a minute listening to weird electronic noises as your ISP did whatever black magic it did with your phone line to establish your internet connection. A connection that only stayed on, by the way, if no one called you during your session, or if you never picked up the phone. If either of those things happened, you were screwed, because that would kill your connection on the spot, interrupting anything that you were doing and forcing you to connect all over again. And if you were doing anything, it was guaranteed to be slooooooow, because it turns out that phone lines are actually pretty crap at bandwidth. Said bandwidth being, on a good day, around 56 kilobits per second. Not kilobytes; bits. In other words, around seven or so kilobytes per second, or literally thousands of times slower than even the worst broadband connection that you can get today. Loading certain websites could measure in minutes, not seconds, and anything that had video or anything remotely taxing in it was an utter non-starter. Oh, and the real, final kicker? You got charged by the minute while all of this was happening, and the rates weren’t cheap. Meanwhile, you could forget about affording something tolerable like broadband unless you had some serious money to burn. So if you were working-class, dial-up was your likely experience with the internet in the 90s. Painful, right?

That said, we did have broadband at my elementary school, and it ended up being the only place where I could explore a lot of the late-90s/early-00s internet that wasn’t an e-mail client or a super-simple, super-boring (for a child) website. And since my classmates were often in the same boat as me regarding their own use of dial-up, we often fought for the few broadband-capable computers that were available to us, haha (especially because recreational time was at a premium at school, too!). I mainly remember playing a lot of Flash games back then, as that was the era where Flash was everywhere. Attempting to play them at home just resulted in me waiting literally over an hour on the loading screen (incurring my parents’ wrath at the AOL bill as a result), so school was the only place I could play them, in the company of my classmates who often watched me (and vice versa, when they played).

Later, when I went to middle school, we all got laptops that we used both in class and at home. We had wireless broadband access at school that I took advantage of, but mainly to access Pokémon-related stuff that I’ve mentioned before in other threads (mainly fanfiction, which I really started to get into around this time) and, perhaps strangely for someone my age, tech-related websites (where I cultivated and solidified my love for technology). Most of the wider internet — that is, the fun stuff, like the aforementioned Flash games from my elementary school days — was blocked off with filters, which I probably could’ve circumvented if I really wanted to (others most certainly did), but I didn’t bother doing; I was a good child, haha. However, there were still great benefit to having that laptop even with these limits, namely that it was the only device that I had with Wi-Fi back then while we were still using AOL (we were rather slow to adapt to new technology in our household). And in those early days of broadband adoption, it wasn’t rare to see unprotected Wi-Fi networks from people who hadn’t quite figured out that whole “security” thing yet. Yes, I happily used said networks, haha, and that ultimately became my first exposure to internet speeds that didn’t suck. It was glorious! Although, again, my use of those speeds were rather benign, compared to what my adolescent self could’ve used them for, haha.

So all in all, I guess you could say that my early internet adventures were quite boring compared to some other peoples’ experiences, haha, yet also slightly exciting at certain points. Most of my actual nostalgia from that time came from my offline adventures, I think. It wouldn’t be much later until I really explored all that the internet had to offer, by which point things had changed quite a bit. I could still feel the relative innocence of those times, though, and I’m glad to say that I was witness to the beginnings of the internet, if only through my own small and unique lens.

 

[Blanc]

I also played liked flash games (addictinggames.com, lol), and I remember being fascinated by sites like ebaum's world (which was pretty much nothing but shock images, where it asks you to find something in the image, then something 'scary' pops out.

I have the VAGUEST memory of addictinggames.com… I’m actually going to check it out on waybackmachine now that you mention it, because I think you unlocked a memory of mine.

Never heard of ebaum’s world but it definitely wouldn’t have been something I could stomach! I was a crybaby and experienced screamers like maybe once or twice and they did a number on me. I always found the early use of those really strange though, because I don’t really understand the idea of getting laughs behind it? Interesting stuff…

I used to read webcomics like XKCD sometimes (which I think is still around)

I have a memory of these as well! Not many, but I remember stumbling across them here and there but I actually had no idea until now they had a proper name… LOL. Today I’ve learned.

Cartoonnetwork.com was my go-to.

Yooo, did you ever play the foster’s home for imaginary friends game they had? I remember you could customize a friend and they would be saved to the browser or something… You did daily chores and could unlock more games in the arcade I think? I always went there to play that.

Besides that, spent a lot of time on message boards too. I'm pretty glad most of their content has been lost to the aether because I was pretty cringe. Glad there's still places like Bulbagarden around, much prefer this over traditional social media.

Same feel here. I have spouted my opinions regarding social media climate and being an artist online (tm) in some other threads here and there. I actually didn’t join any forums besides one as a child, it took a long time for me to be comfortable with putting myself out there in a conversational atmosphere (usually I’d just post on art sites and lurk). But yeah, I love calm places like this where I feel like I can just chatter on into the abyss.

Club Penguin, Scratch, Fantage, Chicken Smoothie, AdventureQuest/AQ Worlds, DollDivine, Ninjakiwi (where I played BTD4/5, and their lesser-known game Meeblings), Webkinz, Animal Jam, Blogspot, xat, Miiverse, and of course Pokemon.com (mostly during the Global Link, Dream World, and Pokémon Trainer Club days, back when there were still games to play and wallpapers to download).

Oh club penguin, how I miss thee. Dolldivine omg, I remember perusing that one. I heard of Chicken Smoothie but never got into it! WEBKINZ THOUGH, DO I HAVE SOME TALES ABOUT THAT ONE. I remember I had a HUGE house for one. I got lost in it LMAOOO. I had a unicorn webkinz and she was my everything. I remember old Pokemon.com! God I miss it. Do you remember when it had that little music player too? I remember when it had the PMD quiz. Something about the old setup was so charming.

Wait wait wait, you're not talking about Quizilla, are you?!?!

Yes. Yes I am. LMAO.

I don't think I ever posted anything to it myself, but it is scary to think that there may be a non-zero chance I could have read something you wrote at some point.

LMAO GOD LIKE SHIPS PASSING IN THE NIGHT. I wrote all those fics when I was like 14. They were SO bad. It was about my OC trainer at the time going on her adventure in typical cheesy mary sue fashion. If you remember reading anything Pokespe or about a trainer called Marine, it was probably me. LOL Quizilla is where I spent a lot of my child ‘social media’ era weirdly enough. It was so goofy.

I absolutely would not be the same person I am today, with the same tastes and sense of humor and sheer creative drive, if not for the hours of fun I had on there watching every AMV, and animation, and let's play, and YTP(MV), and Newgrounds/Nico Nico Douga reupload that I could find.

My ass LIVED on niconico reprints. I took the weeb pill hardcore. I remember on youtube when I wanted to listen to a song, I was never content with just the audio, I had to watch some Pokemon AMV with it. I MISS those old videos we talked about before that were like slideshow images with like, scripted fanfic. Those were so beautiful and real.

I didn't really go on the internet much, if at all as a kid, but! I remember Webkinz

IF WE WERE THE SAME AGE IN ANOTHER TIMELINE MAYBE WE COULD’VE BEEN WEBKINZ FRIENDS….

I remember playing a lot of coolmathgames

Run and Cubefield were there for me like no one else on Coolmathgames i GOTTA be honest.

OHHHH and the sonic flash games????

YES THERE IS EXACLTY ONE I PLAYED. I have no recollection of it other than the fact Cream was a playable character and little blanc was SO pumped about that because I loved Cream. Was not good at it though. LOL

Okay I guess I did more on the internet than I previously thought??? LMAO this is a very great thread as always!

NO SAME EXACT FEEL!! There’s some others I remembered while typing my reply I’ll get to LOL. And no u… U are too sweet.

AJ and Clubpenguin (rest in peace my many accounts)

Genuinely surprised I had somehow never heard of Animal Jam growing up when it feels so integral to my era. Also omg same feel about neopets, I had so many accounts because I kept forgetting them (I was like 8).

I did start off later with the Internet, about 2007, and mostly played World of Warcraft : The Burning Crusade

Yo, no way, I was semi addicted to Wizard101 a year or two after this era. Same MMO background type beat.

I remember the first mention of Skype in the news and us being in awe videocalls were now possible. I remember the first mention of Twitter and everyone saying "eh it will not become like Facebook".

This is actually super cool and insane. I think I vaguely remember everyone thinking facebook would be huge forever too. I was around when all of this tech evolution happened but I never really considered the profound effects of it.

making the decision to start searching about Pokemon again

Well! I’m glad you’re back personally! As I am also glad to be back. There’s something about Pokemon that just realy brings people together like no other, I think.

A connection that only stayed on, by the way, if no one called you during your session, or if you never picked up the phone.

I have the VAGUEST memory of these days. I remember internet dying whenever the phone was picked up. I don’t think we had dial up for too long, but I have a memory of it whenever I went to the computer to play my Spy Fox and Putt Putt CD Rom games. My parents had floppy discs too!

I’m glad to say that I was witness to the beginnings of the internet, if only through my own small and unique lens.

Honestly Baku, your insight is super cool! I only got to taste morsels of what you experienced because my parents are old fashioned and I grew up in a rural area. I actually didn’t know anything about dial up, so this was helpful to read! I had some friends tell me how great AOL mail was and being able to send drawings through it or something too… Wish I got to experience it.


There was alao this one site I was addicted to for a time called Trollz.com. It was based off a low budge cartoon series of trolls dolls (you know the weird little baby things with the tall hair?) that they turned into a dress up game and flash game site. I did a LOT of fashion stuff on that site. You could also send ‘spells’ to your friends on your ‘spellphone’ LMAO that were like, little effects that would be stuck on your troll all day. My friends and I would send the silly ones back and forth.

Another formative memory was when I heard about this new dressup game site on a commercial. (I think it was called Zazzle? I dunno, I was VERY young at the time). So I wanted to check it out, but little baby me couldn’t remember how to spell it. I spelled what I thought it was, and, well. It did not lead to a dress up game site. It led to a site full of topless women. I’m sure you understand. LMAO. I remember being so appalled. I was like ????? this is NOT a cute dress up game site. And closing the tab. LMAOOO

 

[Frozen Fennec]

Recall playing Adventure Quest and Ultimate Flash Sonic a lot when i had access to pc as a kid.

 

[Sheep]

omg... let me wrangle my brain to remember as much as I can.

My internet childhood was Neopets, Teripets, Naruto Fan Flashes, flash games like Winter Bells, Smosh (I think their videos were one of the first I ever watched on YT), MySpace, Yahoo! Messenger chatting, the rockman-exe website, Trickster Online, Gaia Online.. there was also that one comic I read with a talking Mew and Mewtwo. Can't for the life of me remember it. Probably more I'm forgetting, getting feels just thinking about it.

 

[DigitalGen6]

Club Penguin, Scratch, Fantage, Chicken Smoothie, AdventureQuest/AQ Worlds, DollDivine, Ninjakiwi (where I played BTD4/5, and their lesser-known game Meeblings), Webkinz, Animal Jam, Blogspot, xat, Miiverse, and of course Pokemon.com (mostly during the Global Link, Dream World, and Pokémon Trainer Club days

Same Only most of these, unfortunately
I have only heard about Club Penguin through a YouTuber (who was doing a raid in the game, it’s a funny video), and Webkinz earlier this year
And Animal Jam through the same YouTuber who also did a raid on it
Oh yeah, Miiverse! I got in trouble one time for using it but that’s a whole other can of worms, and over a year later I made offline posts that included screen caps from Project Mirai DX (I hereby dubbed it “Daily PMDX Fashion Posts” lol)
And then… Pokémon Dream World (like omg I like the music, never got a chance to use it tho but I heard of it last year and I wish it was still up)

 

[colours]

if anyone's curious, there's a whole search engine designed to search for "classic internet" 1.0 things. been using it lately since i've been in a nostalgic "kinda want to see more forums" mood and while i haven't seen a lot of old-school style forums per se, the number of 00's era websites is really surprising if you know where to look.

 

[Blanc]

if anyone's curious, there's a whole search engine designed to search for "classic internet" 1.0 things. been using it lately since i've been in a nostalgic "kinda want to see more forums" mood and while i haven't seen a lot of old-school style forums per se, the number of 00's era websites is really surprising if you know where to look.

Will definitely check this out!!

I didn't grow up with it, but it deserves to be in this thread because I know some people have. Interestingly enough, I have a good handful of friends who play Roblox and, well, I was curious enough that I decided to try it myself recently! It's... actually not bad! Has some very fun cute little games and some cool stuff rising star devs have put together, I can definitely see why kids are so drawn to it now. (A lot of games scratch my itch for a "false sense of productivity"...) I didn't grow up with Minecraft either, I first played MC when I was 20, so it's just interesting to play games I missed out on or didn't really feel inclined to try as a kid. (I also never heard of Roblox till like... 2017 or so, I wanna say).

Spoiler: cute place

 

[Zexy]

I feel like I will annoy lots of people by saying this... But I really do not know much about what Roblox is about. It seems like a game like Minecraft or Fortnite that is the new craze these days... But I do not know much past that.

 

[carpology]

i mostly grew up on the early 2010s internet... i spent a loooot of time playing club penguin, it was like my biggest interest. i don't know if anyone else did it, but i always tried to find what was called "club penguin private servers" that were like, copies of the original game but you could cheat and have glowing names and statuses and stuff like that. i also spent a lot of time playing a game called transformice, which was one where you played as a mouse and had to go through a sort of obstacle course trying to get a piece of cheese and bring it back to your mouse hole. (i also played on a lot of the off-brand transformice servers as well lol. i loved being able to cheat.) my other big things were a warrior cats roleplay forum (and just forums in general, mostly warrior cats ones--i would be trawling the web trying to find new warrior cats forums to use) and an animal crossing forum. i also liked the early minecraft youtubers, for example i think the name was skydoesminecraft or something? and stampy. i played a little bit of online minecraft servers too, like the hive i think it was called. i did play animal jam like a few other people in this thread too! also, i remember trying to find online multiplayer pokémon games that were like fangames sort of? i don't remember what any of the ones i found were called or even much about them, but maybe someone else has played them. i heard about things like chickensmoothie but never used it, and i was never a flash game person either--i actually didn't really even know they existed. to return to youtube, too, i used to spend a lot of time watching warrior cats MAPs (multi-animator projects) and club penguin music videos, as well as the occasional animal jam music video or transformice music video... there's a lot of stuff i'm thinking of as i'm writing this out but i'll stop here.

 

[Sheep]

if anyone's curious, there's a whole search engine designed to search for "classic internet" 1.0 things. been using it lately since i've been in a nostalgic "kinda want to see more forums" mood and while i haven't seen a lot of old-school style forums per se, the number of 00's era websites is really surprising if you know where to look.

the "surprise me" option is providing me with endless entertainment

Just found a page that has "Last-Modified: Wed, 26 Aug 1992" at the bottom and the nostalgia just seeing that text hit me like a ton of bricks

 

[Aulos]

I first used the internet probably on the tail end of the 90s. I joined my very first forums in 2003, when my parents finally allowed me to. Perhaps that was a mistake on their part, as after that I got soooo addicted.

I miss forums as they were in the 2000s. They were just so active back then. Perhaps it is also how young I was. I was so chatty back then, I could make hundreds of posts in one day! That was before I learned I was annoying and now I am the reclusive grouch you see today. Aw... Those were the days.

Another aspect I miss of the internet back then is early social media, when it appeared in the form of blog sites like Xanga and LiveJournal. I still have a LiveJournal. It's now just between one close friend and myself. I seriously miss this form of social media. You got to know people back then because they actually shared stuff instead of just sharing memes. On FB nowadays, I feel something deep inside me telling me to stop when I'm about to share a life update post or something because no one really does that anymore. I still do sometimes, but it has gone out of style and now I feel like I'll just be...well... annoying if I do that.

An aspect of early social media I also miss were the surveys we used to pass around for each other to fill out. I'll sometimes still fill one out on my LJ, typically ones I did like 15+ years ago to compare my answers. I miss those times. =(

 

[Blanc]

I feel like I will annoy lots of people by saying this... But I really do not know much about what Roblox is about. It seems like a game like Minecraft or Fortnite that is the new craze these days... But I do not know much past that.

It’s not annoying don’t worry, just surprising! You’re not wrong though, Roblox has a similarity to Minecraft in a way. It’s blocky, and like Minecraft has user-made modded servers, Roblox perpetuates entirely on user-made custom games. Think of the site as a hub of like… a bunch of different games made in its own rudimentary engine. Pretty cool what people develop in it. While it’s not perfect (the company has some sketchy business practices and the like) it’s pretty cool. It’s cool it teaches kids how to program and game dev at young ages. Give it a shot sometime if you’re intrigued!

i don't know if anyone else did it, but i always tried to find what was called "club penguin private servers" that were like, copies of the original game but you could cheat and have glowing names and statuses and stuff like that.

Surprised also that I never heard of this! I did play Club Penguin Rewrite before it got shut down though, it’s a shame the IP is owned by Disney, as I don’t think we’ll ever see private servers last long because of this. I think the next game I’ll re-visit is Wizard101.. wonder if my old account still exists.

Just found a page that has "Last-Modified: Wed, 26 Aug 1992" at the bottom and the nostalgia just seeing that text hit me like a ton of bricks

Oh wow, I love time capsule stuff like that. Whenever I see pages like that I always wonder where the person who made it is, how they’re doing and if they’re still around. It’s weird witnessing someone’s age-old digital footprint they probably entirely forgot about, but interesting! I remember back when I was a popular creator at age 13 (lol) on Flipnote Hatena for the DSi, and I saw people talking about my animations in some youtube comments a few months ago, wild stuff.

Another aspect I miss of the internet back then is early social media, when it appeared in the form of blog sites like Xanga and LiveJournal.

Aaaah, same. I arrived on the internet when stuff like this was booming but I was too young to be properly involved (2007ish) but I often stumbled upon livejournal and thought it looked fun. I miss how uncommercialized the internet was, things felt more genuine and I think everyone was a little less afraid to be themselves. I had a friend tell me you could draw or something on Microsoft emails? (There was an exact name for it but I forgor…) I would’ve LIVED on that like I did Flipnote Hatena LOL.

I still do sometimes, but it has gone out of style and now I feel like I'll just be...well... annoying if I do that.

Be annoying!! Be yourself!! You deserve to do whatever you want freely and I for one love to see people still sharing pieces of their lives and themselves in little ways like that.

I also hate how so many sites change their logos into flat and minimalistic things… They all just kinda look the same beside each other.

Oh, and before I forget, for any fellow Neopets players, I’m happy to share that Neopets is finally self-owned once again, and free from the hands of Jumpstart! (That means no more NFT shilling and wasting money). The site is a bit worse for wear now server wise, but I hope this move keeps the lights on a little longer.

 

[toastghost]

i used to go on scratch a lot and make my own undertale battles