25 Posts That Might Make 2000s Kids Feel Nostalgic

A recent Reddit thread posed the question, "Older millennials of Reddit: what was life like in the 2000s?" and the responses painted a vivid picture of a decade marked by technological transitions, cultural milestones, and a unique blend of the analog and digital worlds. From the early days of the internet to the shifting landscape of pop culture, the 2000s were a time of rapid change and unforgettable experiences. Here are some of the most insightful and nostalgic answers shared by the community.

#1

Image source: Turnbob73, Miles Gehm / Flickr Pretty awesome as a kid tbh, I have fond memories of spending entire days skating all over town with friends and then going home and playing the original SKATE or Fallout 3 till midnight. Also, moviegoing was so much better and more fun. Before Marvel picked up its steam, the big blockbuster event that everyone would go to the movies for was Pirates of The Caribbean.

#2

I was in my 20s for the whole decade- finishing college, my first job, meeting my future wife, etc. My view on it: The two defining events were 9/11 and the 2008 financial crash. In retrospect, Bush vs Gore and the Supreme Court stepping in to give it to Bush was the defining event of the decade and maybe the rest of our adult lives. So yeah, much of the decade was spent in the shadow of 9/11 and the Iraq war. The revelations about torture, people slowly realizing they'd been lied to etc. And ofcourse the housing bubble where people I graduated with bought apartments for like $30k and made insane money, while others bought in too late and were ruined financially especially people who got adjustable rate mortgages. It's hard to explain how easy it was to get financing, how much people were approved for. I was making like $40k out of college and was approved for well over $200k, which at the time could get you into a pretty decent place, at least where I lived. I received good advice and locked it down with a fixed rate mortgage for a rowhouse in a gentrifying neighborhood...made like $800 payments for a solid decade before selling and having enough for my next down payment. Silly how one decent decision can really put you on your way. On the flipside, the bubble bursting, the resulting financial crisis and the s****y job market afterwards was terrifying., people were super worried about being laid off, people graduating into a crisis and having their future prospects screwed because they couldn't get a job out of college. The painfully slow recovery. Obama's campaign is hard to describe. People were so sick of Bush, so excited for Obama...he was such an incredible, inspiring speaker, the prospect of a black president was so thrilling. In today's cynical environment it's really hard to capture that feeling. The last burst of rock, all the awesome indie rock and garage bands, people losing their minds over Strokes and White Stripes. The rise and fall of Napster, so many great shows. People covered tech and internet pretty well- AIM, PS2, Goldeneye, message boards, blogs, early Facebook, Fark, ebaumsworld. It was fun, slightly taboo, uncensored, mean, cheeky, random. But you still had alt weeklies, people still used online to plan to hang out in person. Mix of analog and digital that will never exist again. Image source: roma258

#3

Image source: Espionage_21, Spencer E Holtaway / Flickr We ranked our friends 1-8 on Myspace, hung out at the mall, wore makeup 3x too dark for our skin tone, we loved the Snooki Poof, anything Abercrombie (or Hot Topic, depending on your vibe), watched a lot of Ebaum's world, used AIM and cryptic away messages, watched TRL, wore low rise jeans, doubled up on polo shirts with popped collars, and spent a lot of time outside.

#4

Image source: mrsc00b, whereisthered08 / Flickr I knew the phone number of everyone in my circle off the top of my head.

#5

Image source: MethGerbil, Malik Bulatov / Pexels I was excited for the future. I'm 43 now. I am no longer excited for anything :|.

#6

Image source: SPEK2120, geraldcheong / Reddit As someone who has now lived in 4 decades, the 2000s *by far* has had the worst fashion so far. I see you younger generations trying to bring some of it back and you all need to stop it.

#7

Image source: Next_Balance_7681, cottonbro studio / Pexels Boring. Although we didn't realise at the time that was a luxury.

#8

Humanity peaked at Windows XP. Image source: SonicBanger

#9

Image source: wineandcheese, NoAlgae7411 / Pexels Two things that were really different: 1) New episodes of shows came out at a specific time on a specific day, so you’d plan your week around it, then talk about it the next day at work/school or plan to watch it with someone every week. Sometimes I’d even call friends during commercial breaks to discuss what was happening in *that episode* 2) The **incredible** amount of fat-shaming and fat jokes that were so pervasive in 2000s society. It’s really hard to communicate effectively because even though people are definitely still d***s about it, and the media and social media still focuses on/idolizes thin people, there were so many magazines constantly recommending diet tips, gossip magazines negatively commenting on stars who took a single bad photo (“[starlet] gained 20 stress pounds!”) and regular people would compare diets as a normal social interaction. You also **never** saw clothes in sizes bigger than L in non-plus size stores. It really is a different world in that regard.

#10

Image source: anon, jcruu / Reddit I worked at a cellphone store 2006-2008. Was a crazy time as we had like 60 different phone models with like 12 different operating systems. It was actually a difficult job because you had to know a lot about each individual product. Anyone remember BlackBerry? The motorola Razer? Nokias? The TMobile Sidekick? Those hundreds of similar candy bar phones? Ringtones? When low rez camera phones became a thing? T9 texting? I remember texting and driving was more common and actually a lot safer because with T9 it was muscle memory and you wouldn’t have to look at the screen to text.

#11

Touch screen as we know it today was still this sci-fi technology you only saw in movies. Image source: Stef-fa-fa

#12

Image source: iamStanhousen, [deleted] / Reddit We used to go over to someones house after school and just sit on the computer. Like 4-5 people just playing flash games or going to weird, random sites they had heard of and watching terrible content. Now a days, idk, maybe kids do a similar thing with their phones and send each other media. But I'll always remember those days, and knowing when that mother f****r Adam got on the computer that I was about to see some weird s**t.

#13

I can tell you this we had a lot healthier relationship with the internet when it was confined to a single point, the home computer. Image source: MattofCatbell

#14

Image source: Dr_Dankenstein5G, Ben Waardenburg / Unsplash The internet wasn't overloaded with an abundance of the dumbest people on the planet. There were a lot of idiots online, but nowhere near as many as there are now. Also significantly less people worshipped politicians. Prices for most things were way cheaper than they are now. Music was really popping off. Cancel culture wasn't really a thing yet, and you could actually be mildly offensive online without pissing off a million people with blue hair. Life was honestly pretty good in the early 2000s.

#15

Image source: Wilsonq283v, Michael Fötsch / Flickr It was a simpler time. We hung out at the mall, played video games like Halo and Grand Theft Auto. Social media wasn’t as big, so we actually called our friends on the phone to make plans. Napster and LimeWire were the go-to for downloading music.

#16

Image source: harris999x5, monetarylapse / Reddit Music was huge. We had pop-punk bands like Blink-182 and Green Day. TV shows like Friends and The Sopranos were at their peak. We didn’t have YouTube yet, so we’d watch music videos on MTV or VH1. Kids today don’t know the joy of getting a new CD on release day.

#17

Internet was a massive web of interconnecting sites for any interest and hobby. You could browse thousands of sites without repeat. Now it seems like 5 websites filled with screenshots from the other sites and unlimited s****y opinions (including mine) stated as fact from strangers on the Internet. Image source: riphitter

#18

Image source: SpacemanPete, Austin Pacheco / Unsplash The 2000’s was a lot of fun. Actually, to be completely honest, all of my life has been fun. I was born in 1981 so I got to experience the 80’s to a degree, the 90’s as a kid and the 2000s as a young adult. All of those decades had some great things about them. I would not have asked to live in any other period of time. I got to experience the simplicity of life and the nuttiness of current time, both somewhat comfortably. The changes of technology didn’t scare me, and the independence of being a “latch key kid” was also something I got to experience. I don’t think I really answered the question though…but life was fun.

#19

Image source: Godzira-r32, guv316 / Instagram 16/f/cali u? u/Godzira-r32: My whole life changed when I experienced MSN Messenger for the first time. And getting the screen name from a girl you had a crush on? Man, there was nothing like it for 13-year-old me.

#20

Image source: Lumpy_Branch_552, AyanaTheDIVA / Twitter Let’s see. I turned 18 in 2000. Cell phones were starting to get really popular, where most people would have one. I got my first one in 2001 and seemed late to the party. They had this thing called “roaming” though, where you were charged ALOT extra if you were out of network or calling outside the hours in your plan (cell plans would often have free nights and weekends, perfect for a young person, but not a business person). Texting wasn’t really a thing until 2005, and it seemed like a strange concept. But that soon became really popular. Cameras on phones took really bad pictures. Disposable cameras were slowly dying out, and digital cameras were what most people used. Fashion was flair jeans, messy parts until the side part craze in the late 2000s. Low rise pants were extremly low, like one inch zippers, everyone wore rubber thong sandals, sometimes with a wedge (those are coming back). Layering tank tops and shirts on eachother was very popular. Designer jeans were super popular, brands like 7 for all mankind, Juicy Couture, Rock & Republican, True Religion, Citizens of Humanity. There were a lot of cargo pants and cargo shorts for guys. A lot of people shopped at Abercrombie & Fitch, Holluster, American Eagle. Ugg boots became wildly popular for women in 2003, I managed to nab a pair of classic shorts, but Uggs were sold out across the country. MySpace was THE platform in 2005-2007, and then Facebook started taking over. MySpace had a lot of bugs and the fake profiles were overwhelming. Although I loved how I could design my own MySpace page and got really into it. Facebook didn’t have that options. Facebook did have a things called “apps” that you could decorate your page with to an extent (like one was a cork board with little buttons you could choose from called pieces of flair like Office Space) but it wasn’t the same. I didn’t have internet in my phone for the entirety of the 2000s. I had to be at home, or go to a coffee shop. We printed out directions from a site called Mapquest. No google maps. CDs were still a thing, but some people started to get “MP3 players” and iPods. There were also music sharing platforms like Kazaa, Limewire etc. you had to be careful what you downloaded though. Kazaa gave my computer a zillion viruses. I also once spent 24 hours downloading what I thought was Snoop Dogg Doggystyle album, but it ended up being porn. Oh, and this TV streaming s**t and Roku, HULU, Netflix? Hell no. There were regular TV channels and cable. A boyfriend of mine climbed an electrical pole and got us free cable. Netflix did exist, but it was a DVD you’d receive in the mail, watch it, and send it back in the mail. There wasn’t much direct deposit either or online bill paying. You get a paper paycheck that you would take to the bank. Bills were paid with checks that you put in an envelope and send in the mail. There’s more, may come back and edit this.

#21

Image source: SkimsIsMyName, half alive - soo zzzz / Flickr A thing I see people rarely mention is that being someone who didn't really use the internet wasn't frowned upon. I knew lots of people who just used their home phone and mail for everything and did fine even. If they needed a computer you could just go to a library.

#22

Image source: Sea2Chi, Martin Irwin / Flickr Everyone had a f**k ton of DVDs, but people also burned music CDs. If you had money, you had an iPod. Gas became expensive during the 2007 crash, but in the early 2000s, it was close to a dollar per gallon. Cash for clunkers hadn't happened yet, so cars were ridiculously cheap. You could pick up a cr**py one for a few hundred dollars, and a lot of the time, if you were mechanically inclined, you could work on it yourself to keep it running. The Internet started off cr**py but quickly got better. As that happened, online gaming took off. Prior to that, if you wanted to game with your friends, one of you had to haul your PC over to the other's place for a LAN party. Teen movies glorified drinking and partying, so a lot of cheap beer was consumed.

#23

Image source: pavelgavrilovd7til, Christiaan Colen / Flickr We had dial-up internet at first, which was super slow. Kids today don’t know the struggle of waiting for a page to load. We used to rent movies from Blockbuster. And if you missed an episode of your favorite show, you’d have to wait for the rerun.

#24

You could actually understand what rappers were saying. Image source: MrSalacious_

#25

Texting was $0.10 a message. Image source: MatticusFC