Internet Nostalgia

[Queen Of Space]

I used to love all the little games on lego.com and I especially they had this monkey thing like club penguin which had a TMNT crossover and I genuinely don’t remember much about it
EDIT: I FOUND IT OT WAS CALLED MONKEY QUEST
EDIT 2: I also remember this lego Chima MMORPG that LEGO made at one point

 

[Princess Viola]

Does anyone else remember Millsberry.com? I never see anyone else talking about it.

It was an advergame ran by General Mills in the mid-2000s that I played nearly every day back in like 4th and 5th grade. What I mostly remember from the game is that my baby trans egg self would often dress my character, who I made as a boy because I was an egg back then, in girl's clothes.

Wow what a surprise I ended up trans.

 

[Blanc]

Does anyone else remember Millsberry.com? I never see anyone else talking about it.

Yes! I remember this game! A lot of kids in my class played it for a bit. I ended up quitting playing it because my account was bugged and I couldn’t get more money LOL. For an advergame, I remember it being quite impressive! I was obsessed with playing it as a glorified dress up game.

I don’t really remember much else about it beyond browsing people’s houses though.

 

[Salmancer]

Millsberry? Only vaguely. Like, I know I interacted with it, but specifics are lost to the recesses of my brain.

Now, Neopets was my jam. I could go over a few tales from it, but my go to was that I had a Red Petri that I wanted to paint Starry or Eventide and make a mage in some manner. I really wanted to get a Petri Egg Wand because it's a weapon specific to Petris that fits the theme perfectly. This is the part where people start laughing, because if you check the stats of the Egg Wand on Jellyneo's In Depth Battlepedia, you'll find it's a classic example of overly rare overpriced garbage. But kids don't care about stats! (And I don't think Neopets communicated weapon quality very well.)

I also insisted on giving all of my Neopets first and last names (separated by the "space" at home, the underscore), except for a Green Ixi I adopted. No clue why.

Also, I played alot of Flash games. It's nice to see Nitrome is still around even after Flash went out, though I haven't checked in with their more recent output. (I think I only found my way there because I misspelt "Nintendo" but I can't be certain.) I have fond memories of all the multiplayer ones, and even the tricky single player ones.

 

[Princess Viola]

I played Neopets, like nearly every kid did, but I never really got super into it. I'd log in and do whatever it was you did on that site with your Neopets but when I lost interest in it, well that was that.

Pretty sure they purged old unused accounts ages ago, so there's no way I could even get access to my old Neopets as an adult.

 

[Sheep]

omg the amount of people saying Neopets makes me happy lol. Honestly even though I'm not on it 24/7 like I used to be as a kid, it's important enough to me that I don't think I'll ever completely abandon it until if/when the site closes.

 

[soulsilvers]

I was already way too skilled with the family Windows 2000 as a 6-year old. Oh well, there were Hamtaro-themed Geocities and dress up games to stare at for hours. There were these Finnish forums later that were obsessed with Fullmetal Alchemist and Silver Fang. Sadly I never could figure out how Neopets worked so I went to Habbo Hotel instead. This was a terrible choice in my life.

 

[Claire386]

I'm pretty young compared to most of you guys but I do remember the internet back to when I was about 10 or 11 (I'm 21 now) and I remember being a part of various forums and it's crazy to see how different I was at the time. The old me would probably appreciate the new me because I've grown a lot since then and have gained a nice amount of confidence. c: I also remember using a silly chat program called Skype to talk to my friends and tbh I miss those days. I also remember youtube looking much different back then and having waaaay fewer ads!

 

[Princess Viola]

This is more of a general Internet nostalgia thing rather than nostalgia over any specific websites, but I just miss the old Internet in general.

I miss the days before everything online became so goddamn sanitized, corporatized, and homogenized into just a handful of big sites for the vast majority of people.

I know there are exceptions to this (this place being an example of one), but I think of the days when forums were the dominant form of fandom discussion online. You would get a real sense of community and culture that you just don't get nowadays where most fandom interactions are just on social media like Twitter or Tumblr (or even Reddit and Discord and do NOT get me started on websites shutting down their forums in replacement for Discord servers. DISCORD. IS. NOT. A. REPLACEMENT. FOR. A. FORUM.) Like I'm active on a few subreddits for things I'm a fan of and I'll participate in discussions, but there's just no real community, y'know? Like I don't actually know any of the other users there.

Compare that to a forum like this one where that community does exist because while this is a forum for Pokémon fans, you have all these subforums for talking about stuff other than Pokémon so we actually get to know each other more than if all we could do was talk about Pokémon.

I just miss the days when the Internet was actually fun and not shit like it has been for years, y'know?

 

[Mythra]

This is more of a general Internet nostalgia thing rather than nostalgia over any specific websites, but I just miss the old Internet in general.

I miss the days before everything online became so goddamn sanitized, corporatized, and homogenized into just a handful of big sites for the vast majority of people.

I know there are exceptions to this (this place being an example of one), but I think of the days when forums were the dominant form of fandom discussion online. You would get a real sense of community and culture that you just don't get nowadays where most fandom interactions are just on social media like Twitter or Tumblr (or even Reddit and Discord and do NOT get me started on websites shutting down their forums in replacement for Discord servers. DISCORD. IS. NOT. A. REPLACEMENT. FOR. A. FORUM.) Like I'm active on a few subreddits for things I'm a fan of and I'll participate in discussions, but there's just no real community, y'know? Like I don't actually know any of the other users there.

Compare that to a forum like this one where that community does exist because while this is a forum for Pokémon fans, you have all these subforums for talking about stuff other than Pokémon so we actually get to know each other more than if all we could do was talk about Pokémon.

I just miss the days when the Internet was actually fun and not shit like it has been for years, y'know?

I know I vented about this in the venting thread but my gripe is pretty much similar. The internet has been transformed. Every website asking for a phone number to authenticate accounts is ridiculous. It's nothing less than an invasion of privacy because authenticator apps exist yet these big tech platforms insist on users providing phone numbers.

I have quit social media since last year yet my coworker asked for help with Facebook. No problem right? Except Facebook makes phone numbers the default for making accounts instead of emails. I recently learned that Discord does the same thing now.

The fact they try to paint it as a way to combat fake news or for user safety is disingenuous. Will giving corporations phone numbers stop cyber bullying? This forum does more to stop abuse in its tracks than big tech. I reiterate my earlier point: this is because there are alternatives to authenticate without phone numbers. The internet feels restricted now. Organic communities no longer form. It is very disheartening.

I once ran a fairly large facebook page and Meta kept harassing me for my phone number because apparently authenticator apps stopped being enough sometime in 2022. The fact that they were so hell bent of uncovering my identity contributed to me deciding to fold that page.