Oh, the 2000s. People were celebrating that the world didn't end in 1999. Flip phones were all the rage, low-rise jeans were the hottest thing in fashion, and tweens and teens were listening to pop-punk on their MP3 players. Maybe it's just the nostalgia talking, but the British, for example, think life was best in the 2000s.
Although I was a tween in the noughties, I don't really see it. But other millennials would like to argue that this was the case. The people in this thread came to the defense of the '00s, sharing what life was like back then, including the good, the embarrassing, and the bad.
Bored Panda reached out to the person who started this thread, u/1dfk000. They kindly agreed to have a chat with us about the 2000s and what things people will probably miss from the 2020s. Read our conversation below!
#22
Born in 1989, so most of my childhood and development happened in the 2000s.
I got in trouble with my parents for racking up $40 on our cell phone bill because I was texting my crush too much. Couldn't call her until after 7pm either because that's when free minutes on Sprint started. Speaking of cell phones, it was actually really controversial in my parent's social circle when they gave me a cell phone when I was 12. It was still almost unheard of at that point, and I even got in trouble for bringing it to school, even though I kept it in my backpack.
Also, I miss that gaming seemed so much more social. It was weird and frustrating if you played with anyone who didn't have a mic. All the angsty AIM away messages that quoted some s****y Midwest emo rock bands. And man I miss AIM.
Everything just overall seemed simpler. Technology is a wonderful thing. I've made a career out of it. But I do miss how much more simple it felt like when it was still evolving.
I look at it with nostalgia, but the events in the 2000s also setup millennials to have a hard time in our adult years. 9/11 flipped the world upside down. I graduated from high school into the 2008 Great Recession. And for a lot of us trying to make financial progress through the 2010s, a lot of us had that progress wiped away in 2020 during the pandemic. So a lot of people in our generation has become justifiably bitter and pessimistic.
I got in trouble with my parents for racking up $40 on our cell phone bill because I was texting my crush too much. Couldn't call her until after 7pm either because that's when free minutes on Sprint started. Speaking of cell phones, it was actually really controversial in my parent's social circle when they gave me a cell phone when I was 12. It was still almost unheard of at that point, and I even got in trouble for bringing it to school, even though I kept it in my backpack.
Also, I miss that gaming seemed so much more social. It was weird and frustrating if you played with anyone who didn't have a mic. All the angsty AIM away messages that quoted some s****y Midwest emo rock bands. And man I miss AIM.
Everything just overall seemed simpler. Technology is a wonderful thing. I've made a career out of it. But I do miss how much more simple it felt like when it was still evolving.
I look at it with nostalgia, but the events in the 2000s also setup millennials to have a hard time in our adult years. 9/11 flipped the world upside down. I graduated from high school into the 2008 Great Recession. And for a lot of us trying to make financial progress through the 2010s, a lot of us had that progress wiped away in 2020 during the pandemic. So a lot of people in our generation has become justifiably bitter and pessimistic.
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18points
#23
Touch screen as we know it today was still this sci-fi technology you only saw in movies.
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18points
#24
I remember when working from home meant 4 phone lines for me, one for home phone, one for work phone, one for dial up and one for a fax. Hard to believe that faxes are still a thing though.
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16points
#25
Simpler in many ways. News was less partisan. Politics was still focused around issues. The internet was opening up the world to people, not consuming our entire lives. It was still on our computers and not our phones. We watched Family Guy, Jackass, South Park, Chappelle's Show, Jerry Springer. We loved movies. Our cartoons were cool. There wasn't so much going on that you couldn't keep up. Most of us were all on the same page of pop culture because it was still coming through TV. We watched a lot of TV, but when it aired. Or DVDs.
Green Day and Blink 182 were at their peaks. MTV was a big cultural trendsetter but was on it's way out. Our cultural ennui toward suburban life was peak. College was expensive.
Final Fantasy was in its best era. Following 6 and 7, 10 came out and we all lost our minds.
Social media was AIM messenger, using Facebook to see where the parties were at and who was single, and dating had to be done in person. No doomscrolling, ragebaiting, daily addictions.
Your favorite bands were affordable to see. Unless you were seeing like NSYNC, it was $20 shows in some divey place with some band you heard on MTV.
And if you wanted to hang out with people, you called them up or still just knocked on their doors.
Overall, way way simpler.
Certainly not every single thing was better. We did massively change the course of history with the 2000 election in terms of politics and climate. 9/11 changed our internal surveillance state and set us off to war for two decades. From that came partisan news. The internet targeted individuals more clearly with advertising and really started dividing worlds and making our realities different. Shared reality started going. Corporate conglomeration was happening. The billionaire class was emerging. World of Warcrack came out and the era of creating truly addictive content was just kind of cracked there. It wasn't always about making great stuff, but the stuff that made you hooked with your eyeballs. And people were wearing Ed Hardy, Affliction, and spray tans. Toward the end we had a massive recession that saw financial greed nearly destroy our economy. And a lot of that is still happening today. And we still had to print our maps with Mapquest or just memorize s**t.
Oh, but the joy of leaving the house and never being bothered until you came home... pure bliss.
Green Day and Blink 182 were at their peaks. MTV was a big cultural trendsetter but was on it's way out. Our cultural ennui toward suburban life was peak. College was expensive.
Final Fantasy was in its best era. Following 6 and 7, 10 came out and we all lost our minds.
Social media was AIM messenger, using Facebook to see where the parties were at and who was single, and dating had to be done in person. No doomscrolling, ragebaiting, daily addictions.
Your favorite bands were affordable to see. Unless you were seeing like NSYNC, it was $20 shows in some divey place with some band you heard on MTV.
And if you wanted to hang out with people, you called them up or still just knocked on their doors.
Overall, way way simpler.
Certainly not every single thing was better. We did massively change the course of history with the 2000 election in terms of politics and climate. 9/11 changed our internal surveillance state and set us off to war for two decades. From that came partisan news. The internet targeted individuals more clearly with advertising and really started dividing worlds and making our realities different. Shared reality started going. Corporate conglomeration was happening. The billionaire class was emerging. World of Warcrack came out and the era of creating truly addictive content was just kind of cracked there. It wasn't always about making great stuff, but the stuff that made you hooked with your eyeballs. And people were wearing Ed Hardy, Affliction, and spray tans. Toward the end we had a massive recession that saw financial greed nearly destroy our economy. And a lot of that is still happening today. And we still had to print our maps with Mapquest or just memorize s**t.
Oh, but the joy of leaving the house and never being bothered until you came home... pure bliss.
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16points
#26
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.
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.
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15points
#27
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.
15points
#28
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.
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.
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14points
#29
There was a period of time where "there's nothing on TV" was a real thing. The 2000s brought an end to those limited choices. You went from channel surfing dozens of TV channels, to having access to hundreds, with on-demand programming gaining traction.
The feeling of having things at your fingertips really started to happen in many aspects of everyday life. Cellphones became smart, and mainstream. Media piracy platforms that offered you anything you could imagine with the low cost of potentially destroying the family computer. The music was amazing. The movies were amazing.
Being a teenager in the 00s was pretty awesome. The use of computers was still new enough that we were look to as being experts or computer whiz kids if you had even a basic mastery of them.
The future looked promising. Part of it was just growing up and learning more about the world - but it did seem the carefully crafted "the adults know what they're doing" illusion got ripped away with the dotcom bubble, 9/11, and the housing market crash.
The feeling of having things at your fingertips really started to happen in many aspects of everyday life. Cellphones became smart, and mainstream. Media piracy platforms that offered you anything you could imagine with the low cost of potentially destroying the family computer. The music was amazing. The movies were amazing.
Being a teenager in the 00s was pretty awesome. The use of computers was still new enough that we were look to as being experts or computer whiz kids if you had even a basic mastery of them.
The future looked promising. Part of it was just growing up and learning more about the world - but it did seem the carefully crafted "the adults know what they're doing" illusion got ripped away with the dotcom bubble, 9/11, and the housing market crash.
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14points
#30
One thing that shocked me, back then if you liked anime in school you got beaten up or bullied.
When I went back to college, my gen z classmates openly talked about and watched anime. I even got called a hipster and a boomer for saying I wasn't currently watching anime.
Feels kinda unfair. I had to hide that s**t for years. XD.
When I went back to college, my gen z classmates openly talked about and watched anime. I even got called a hipster and a boomer for saying I wasn't currently watching anime.
Feels kinda unfair. I had to hide that s**t for years. XD.
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12points