# One day I happened to be watching a YouTube video about where “dark mode” came from in operating systems, and something he said was kind of a wake-up call for me.
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Apparently there are now grown adults who don’t know what forums are.
I shouldn’t be surprised, but I forget how much time has passed. This is a useful reminder for me. I guess it’s time to explain how the internet worked 15 years ago.
# The irony is that it never actually went away. What changed was smart phones being invented in 2007. Everybody immediately loved them, but their itty bitty teensy weensy teeny tiny 3 inch touch screens made old websites impractical to use.
# Some websites completely redesigned themselves to accommodate these popular new gadgets. But many did not. So people migrated to more convenient new things like Discord and brand new websites like MySpace and FaceBook that were all designed for phones from the start.
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And so the old web was forgotten. Still there. Still used by some. But everybody and their dog had an iPhone now. And as the decades passed. A new generation grew up never knowing everything else. Never discovering the old wonders still waiting just beyond the tiny screen.
#How Did People Find Out About Things?
# Just use a search engine to look up a website about that subject, or revisit your favorite website about it. Search engines were the lifeblood of the internet before social media. Everything started there.
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Think about it. The entire reason why Google became popular at all is because people used to actually look for websites.
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Everybody had a daily routine. A set of favorite websites they would check each day. But it was different for each person, because everybody’s interests are different. I actually still do this today. Back in 2010 we didn’t just jump on Twitter and doom-scroll until the sun set. Instead we checked each of our favorite websites in case anything new was posted, such as a reply to something you wrote the day before, or a new article. And after you finished looking at the day’s handful of new things… you left. It usually didn’t even take that long. You could get through all of your morning websites in about an hour or two, and then go on with your day, or jump on a search engine to look for more stuff. We were constantly finding new websites because we were actively looking for them. And we were looking because every website always ran out of stuff to look at. You could actually finish exploring a website back then. There was no such thing as infinite scrolling.
# Popular websites tended to be ones that updated often. If a website rarely updated it tended to get forgotten because there was no longer any reason to revisit it. Gamespot and IGN were pretty useful for game news, and their websites still exist today even though everybody just watches them on YouTube instead. The most popular sites were things like Gaia Online and Neopets, because they were equal parts website and game. A total hybrid. You played them in your browser. Each page was a different “place” in the game. You would play Flash mini-games in your browser, collect items, trade them with your friends, or sell them for game currency, or use that currency to buy accessories and outfits for your avatar, or to customize each of your neopets. You could also just hang out with friends in online games instead of websites. There was no one single universal home. Everybody picked their own homes online.
# By the way, all of those links still work… it’s almost like those websites still exist or something.
#RSS Feeds
# If you were really clever, you would use RSS feeds and iGoogle to see when your favorite websites updated without having to visit them one by one. Instead you saw a list of that website’s recent posts, right next to another website’s list. You could even combine these together into a single list of what’s new on your personal internet. This was much faster and very convenient. Your list would tell you when a website had something new and THEN you could choose to visit it.
# We “followed” entire websites the same way that you might “follow” a person on social media. You subscribed to a website and then your RSS list would you tell you when there was something new to see. RSS is still works today but most people forgot about it when Google killed Google Reader and iGoogle, so they no longer had an obvious way to see their feeds inside the browser. You could use an RSS Feed Reader program instead. Tons of these programs exist, but most people didn’t bother to look for them.
The Google Graveyard#Instant Messengers
# Instead of Discord we had instant messengers. AOL, MSN, and ICQ were the most popular ones. These were separate computer programs that you ran outside of your browser. Usually you would tell it to automatically start up when you turned on your computer and it would just run all the time in the background. When one of your friends wanted to talk, they would send a message and you would instantly see it.
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Sure, the old flip-phones could do text messaging, but it was kind of crappy. You had to type on a number pad, and the screen was microscopic. The computer was just better at everything.
# Our family members and real-life friends would all be on instant messengers as well. Facebook didn’t exist. People just talked to each other using programs. You could send text, pictures, and any other file you wanted, like a one-on-one Discord. But it was common to be having multiple conversations at the same time, with each person in a separate window. Some instant messenger programs combined AOL MSN and ICQ together so it didn’t even matter which program your friends used. You could just talk to each other no matter what. But that’s all it did. It didn’t have “Discord servers”. It was just you and your friends.
# By the way, that website still exists… it’s almost like that program still works or something.
#Forums
# Instead of Discord servers we had forums. Websites that were dedicated to talking about your favorite things. Each forum had an overall theme. And you would visit it regularly to see if anybody posted something new or replied to you. The forum server software was free, so anybody could add one to their website, so there were thousands of forums. In fact most of them still exist today but most people are too distracted to visit anymore. They fell out of fashion because they look bad on phones. They weren’t designed for tiny screens. Discord does work well on phones so most people switched to that instead.
#Most of These Still Exist!
# Some websites closed over the years, but most of the old internet didn’t go away. It’s still sitting there being ignored by everyone. If you look around, some forums are still active. Some old games still have people in them hanging out together. Websites like Newgrounds and GameSpot still exist with tons of stuff to show anybody who remembers to visit. And most search engines will still take you to these places if you bother to look.
# RSS Feeds still work today even without iGoogle. Just use a browser extension like Feedbro, or a dedicated feed reader program.
# Instant Messenger programs still exist such as Trillian and Pidgin. DemonSaw is one that I currently use a lot. It’s kind of like an Instant Messenger with encryption and file sharing.
#Let’s do This Again Sometime
# I should probably revisit this topic again in another 15 years, when the next generation has grown up and wonders what things were like now.
# Why 15 years? Because a five year old today is barely aware of the world around them. In 15 years they will be an adult, wondering what that whole “social media” fad was about, back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth in the long-ago ancient year of 2025.
