Things We Miss from the Y2K Era
It's the year 2006. You're messaging your friends on MSN while procrastinating on a school assignment, playing a song on Windows Media Player that you downloaded off LimeWire. MTV is on in the background, counting down the latest top hits, and... life is good. Little did you know that everything you enjoy will become obsolete 20 years later. Ready for a trip back to the past? Here are 20 things from the 2000s that don't exist anymore.
1. LimeWire
Listened to a good song but didn't want to pay for it? LimeWire (or Napster) was your savior. A peer-to-peer file sharing service, it was the tool people used in the early 2000s to (shh) secretly download pirated music.
2. LiveJournal
Remember LiveJournal? If you've written cringey entries on there, you probably don't want to relive that phase and would rather keep it buried. While the platform is still up and running, it's a shell of its former self, and is now a Russian-owned social networking service akin to Twitter/X.
DaryaDarya LiveJournal on Unsplash
3. MSN Messenger
Ah, late-night chats with your best friends on MSN were the way to end a good weekend (and school nights, if we're being honest). This iconic messaging platform might not exist anymore, but kids and teens from the early 2000s will forever remember its service.
4. Phone Books
Finding a phone number wasn't as easy back in the day as it is now, where you can just search up a business and Google will spit out the answer. That was why phone books were so important; without them, you probably wouldn't ever know your favorite pizza place's number unless you physically went in and asked. Modern technology may have rendered these directories obsolete, but we'll remain fond of them.
5. iPods
Smartphones have combined all the essentials we used to operate separately—calling, texting, surfing the web, and listening to music. But before the rise of them (and audio streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music), we had dedicated portable music players like iPods.
6. Blockbuster
When was the last time you rented out a VHS tape to watch a movie? When was the last time you even stepped foot in a Blockbuster—if ever? Chances are, you probably don't remember. With TV shows and movies at the click of a button nowadays through Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, and other services, video rental stores are (thankfully) a thing of the past.
7. Club Penguin
Going fishing, adopting a Puffle, partying at igloos... Club Penguin was the place to be as a kid. And while fan-made versions are still up and accessible even now, nothing beats the original and all the craze it'd brought with it.
8. Old Flip Phones
Motorola Razr, anyone? Sure, modern flip phones exist (Samsung Galaxy Z Flip, for example), but these are smartphones with a bendable screen. And even if you were to nab a clamshell phone now, it likely won't be as nostalgic as the classic ones you grew up with.
9. CD Binders
Before the rise of music streaming services and smart screens in cars, the only way you could hear your favorite song during your daily commute, other than tuning to the radio, was to insert a CD. If you had multiple CD albums and playlists? You had to pull out your CD binder, find the one you were looking for, and swap it in.
10. Old MTV Shows
Turning the channel to MTV back in the day was probably how most people spent their time after coming home from school or work. Shows like Punk'd, Pimp My Ride, Parental Control (yeah, remember that show?), and even Top 20 Video Countdown were favorites you likely remember watching.
11. μTorrent
Admit it—if you had LimeWire installed, you probably also had μTorrent installed. Hey, anything to watch movies and download stuff for free, right? (Yes, even at the expense of catching viruses.) While this BitTorrent client still exists, it's a shadow of what it was back in those prime years, and no one really uses it anymore.
12. Neopets
If you didn't own a Tamagotchi (or you raised one in tandem), you definitely had a Neopet. These virtual pets were needy, little things that you probably forgot to feed and play with once in a while, because you only ever really visited them during lab time at school. Though Neopets technically still exists under a new management, it doesn't beat the old, nostalgic version you grew up with.
Neopets Metaverse on Wikimedia
13. Walkmans
Before iPods were a thing, there was the Walkman. Manufactured by Sony, these portable music players skyrocketed in popularity in the '80s for their design and convenience, and the term "Walkman" was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in the same decade. Great as it was, it couldn't beat the modernity of the iPod.
14. Clippit
That annoying Microsoft Office Assistant you knew as Clippy? Sure, you hated the little paperclip whenever it'd popped up with unnecessary suggestions on your documents, but now, you kind of miss it. Or maybe that's just the nostalgia talking.
15. Tamagotchis
Technically, you can still buy new re-releases today (such as the Gen 1 and V3/Connection Tamagotchis), but if you're an avid collector or extremely nostalgic, you're probably not going to find other versions and specific designs. These tiny digital pets were all the rage back then, though, and that their popularity still persists even decades later might hint that their other versions will eventually come back.
16. VideoNow
Produced by Hasbro and released in 2003, this portable video player was the coolest thing back in the day. If you had one and brought it to school with you, kids flocked around and begged to watch an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants or The Fairly OddParents. It's hard to imagine the craze for it when smartphones exist now, but VideoNow was nonetheless iconic at the time.
17. Chain Emails
If you don't share this article with 10 people, someone will appear in your mirror at night. We're kidding, obviously. But remember the grip chain emails had on us back in the day? Even if you didn't believe them one bit, you probably still felt obligated to pass it along every time your friends sent one to your inbox.
Stephen Phillips - Hostreviews.co.uk on Unsplash
18. Ask Jeeves
Google, Yahoo, or Bing might be your default search engine now, but many others existed back then. Remember Ask Jeeves? Technically, Ask Jeeves still exists (though renamed), but it's not as iconic or as nostalgic as it was to use it in the early 2000s.
19. Floppy Disks
If you wanted to store files or backup data back then, you had to transfer it onto a floppy disk. Given how much technology has advanced, it's almost unfathomable how complex things used to be. Nowadays, processes like these are much smoother and intuitive.
20. Windows Media Player
Microsoft released a new version of Windows Media Player in 2022, but the old one, now called Windows Media Player Legacy, remains the iconic, beloved one we all remember growing up with. Sure, it only had basic functionality and was frustrating to use at times, but it's nostalgic nonetheless.
