30 Things That Used To Be A Big Deal Back In 2000, But Have Faded Out, As Shared By Folks In This Online Group
Every generation will have their own ‘boy, those were the good old days’ moment whenever thinking about what happened 20, 30, 40 or more years ago, depending on how old you are.
For Millennials, the '90s and early aughts is that time period—a time when consumer electronics were not just booming, but innovating like crazy; fashion and style was best described as ‘it’s in that angsty teenager phase’; and pop music was something that you’d now consider a guilty pleasure, for the most part.
People of Reddit were recently reminiscing about the 2000s by sharing things that were used heavily during that time, but are almost never used today. Mostly, it’s electronics, but things like fashion and fads, stores, activities, and memes made the list.
Bored Panda has collected the best answers from the now viral AskReddit question, which gained nearly 60,000 upvotes, and created the curated list below. Go ahead and scroll through it, vote, and let us know what you’d add to the list in the comment section below!
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Calculators; teachers kept saying “you won’t have one with you all the time”, look who’s stupid now, b@#$h?! Both of us…
Dial-Up.
weeeeeeeee WOOOOOO_OOOOOO_
E E E E E E E EEEEEeeeeee
eee
eee URRRRRRRRR
BEDULUDOLEDULUDOLEEPEEPEEP
R R R R R R R R R R R R R
UMMMMMMMMMMMM
Adreeisadyno said:
Pay phones.
Yes I know pay phones still exist. Also I am now very aware pay phones are free in Australia, thank you for informing me.
resentfulpenguin replied:
In Australia they recently made all payphones free. The cost of collecting the cash was higher than the revenue they were making so they can save money by giving away free calls.
Re-writable CDs. I used to burn so many mix CDs after downloading from Napster, BearShare, LimeWire, FrostWire. Then my mother would call, disconnecting the internet and I would have to start the download all over again. Except one file wasn't an mp3, but a virus. I would just reinstall windows before my mom got home as we saved every picture and document on a zip drive... then those fancy jaz drives.
Limewire, where you didn’t know if you were downloading the Dookie album or an album of viruses. Good times
Indoor smoking. My young-ish kids marvel at the fact that people used to sit in restaurants and smoke.
Blue eyeshadow. You could always tell when a junior high school aged girl finally got the okay from her parents to start wearing makeup. She'd show up at school everyday for the next month looking like a blue panda.
I think blue eyeshadow is fine, but it’s gotta be part of a colour story with high and low lights, just slapping a couple garage doors on your eyelids is not a great look.
Murtamatt said:
Phone books.
All_Lines_Merge replied:
I actually used one last week! I needed the home number of a local mechanic - he'd fixed my car but had forgotten to give me my keys, so when I went to get my car after work, I couldn't. The internet only listed the shop number. I called my dad, who's a friend of his, and he said, "just use the phone book!" Like it was the most obvious thing in the world. (I did have a phone book and was able to call him, so it all worked out in the end).
Computer mice with a ball:
My friend had one of the first Microsoft IntelliMouse , which did not use a ball.
As I recall, it was the first laser mouse without a ball that was commercialized in a popular way. It was released in October 1999. So in 2000, most mice were with a ball, and slowly faded away.
larrythetarry said:
Blockbuster card.
zippyslug31 replied:
I live a half-hour away from one. Granted, it's the last one, but still...
pegleg_1979 replied:
It’s surreal walking around that store. Closest thing to time traveling I’ll ever get to do.
ParoxysmAttack said:
If you had a big screen TV, it was probably a ridiculously thick rear projection TV.
CristyTango replied:
My parents can’t get it out of the house.
No-Sheepherder-2896 said:
The term “World Wide Web”.
Bilbo_nubbins replied:
“Visit us at h t t p colon slash slash w w w dot p b s dot o r g”
RixirF replied:
I can still hear them thank viewers like me.
BigBump said:
Spinning under construction gifs on websites.
starkiller_bass replied:
Remember when most websites had a hit counter on them?
Syscrush replied:
And the email address of the webmaster?
darkcatwizard replied:
And a guest book 😂
PawnedPawn replied:
And crappy mouse cursor-following animations that killed your processor speed but at least looked pretty...
hellobyethanks said:
PDAs Personal Digital Assistants
Blacktung replied:
Whenever I write something down on my hand I always say out loud "I'll put that in my palm pilot".
I get a sad chuckle every time.
brokenturle said:
Zip Disks.
zoobs replied:
Remember Jaz disks? I was so blown away by a 1gb disk!
tratemusic replied:
This week i got a micro SD card for my switch. 64 gigs, in a micro card, for less than 20 bucks. I really marvel at the advancements in our storage technology just within my lifetime.
omguserius replied:
I still remember back in the day, my father looking at a computer game box and yelling, “TEN megabytes? Who the [heck] needs 10 megabytes for a video game!?!”
Murtamatt said:
VCRs.
xtracto replied:
Tape rewinders!!
BE KIND, REWIND!
I liked the ones that had the form of a sports car.
atxbikenbus replied:
I worked at a blockbuster. We had rows and rows of rewinders. People...were not kind.
Belazriel replied:
I remember an eventual switch to "Don't rewind" because the VCRs people had at home were rougher on the tapes than a standalone tape rewinder.
Any sort of dedicated music-playing device, before that just became a part of your phone.
Ocean927 said:
Maps or Mapquest.
deadlymoogle replied:
My wife calls Google maps MapQuest if we need directions she'll tell me to MapQuest it on my phone.
nfssmith replied:
My wife still used Mapquest until maybe 2 years ago when I asked her if she was looking for directions back to 1998.
I know someone who still prints maps, there's about 100 pages of random maps in their car "just in case there's no signal". I told them you can download the map and use it offline. Nope, have to waste paper and ink by printing the freaking directions to Tesco or whatever. Infuriating.
Download Managers.
Start the download right after Mom goes to bed, wake up before her to pause the download and disconnect the dial-up connection, resume tomorrow night. Repeat...
A week later, you're playing Counter-Strike. 😎
DamnedMonkey said:
ICQ.
Squallypie replied:
Couple of years ago, I had a number come into my head. Recognized it but didn’t know where from. For over a year it kept bugging me. Was it my college enrolment/password? Number for someone I worked with when I worked overseas? Not a clue for the longest time.
Random convo with a friend about old memes and things we miss about the early internet days, and I just blurted out “its my [friggin] ICQ number!” with no context…
skaote said:
Pagers.
AleksandrNevsky replied:
People still think my insulin pump is a pager sometimes.
CouncilmanRickPrime replied:
Doctors still use them.
We have a dedicated local pager system tied to call system at an Assisted Living Center. A Resident pulls their cord and immediately a page goes out with the room # to the Caregiver who caries it during their shift. Haven't found a more efficient replacement
TheKillersHand said:
The phase "W'zzzzzuppppp".
MattHack7 replied:
WAAAZZZZZUUUUUUUUUUUPPPP?!?!?!?!?
I may or may not have read this (in my head) in a Milhouse voice (not Mulhouse lol)
AdamoclesYT said:
Colored spikey hair gel.
ShowMeYourTorts replied:
Bro, I am still waiting for the day frosted tips make a comeback.
thricetheory replied:
Honestly man the kids these days look straight outta the 90's, though most of them seem to think it's original. Wouldn't surprise me if frosted tips are next.
I had frosted tips, puka shell necklaces, the big fossil watch. I looked hot. Now 20+ yrs later I’m a balding gray haired dude with a dad bod and live in crocs and sweats
thelaughingman2 said:
Landlines.
portablebiscuit replied:
Also 1-800-COLLECT and 1-800-CALLATT.
Dial down the middle!
Triumph3 replied:
Bob Wehadababyitsaboy
nobody2000 replied:
I needed to use payphones before this commercial and this was something we'd all do.
"Please state your name after the tone" MOMPICKMEUPATSCHOOL
"You have a collect call from MOMPICKMEUPATSCHOOL"
The best part was when she'd say "no" to the charges, and I secretly wondered if anyone was going to actually pick me up, or if they thought that the bus would take me (Jazz band practice ended after the late bus departed).
Is it an actual land line or a VoIP house phone? Most phone companies switched to VoIP. I only know that because I needed an actual phone line for medical equipment and it was so hard to find a carrier that wasn't just using the internet.
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Landlines are more secure, more reliable, will still work in a power outage, never needs recharging. They also are convenient to anyone in the home, can always be located as well.
Just make sure you have at least one fixed phone. Cordless handsets don't work in a powercut, as the basestation needs electricity.
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Strangely, I can never quite take a business seriously if all they have is a mobile number. It always seems a bit dodgy to me.
We live on the shore of Lake Erie. Everyone on the shoreline is below the line of sight of the cell towers. Therefore, cell service is weak, therefore we all have landlines even with wiFi calling.
What part of the Lake? I lived there and still have family members there who have no issues. The Islands are probably the only iffy cell reception locations.
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I still have a landline, with the same number for 50 years now. When Comcast asks if I want to bundle phone onto my cable I always ask what would happen to the phone if I lose power. Still haven't gotten a good answer. But what about cell phone? I live in the bottom of a valley with bad cell service so I think I'll keep my old land line.
😂 Lucky for you, that feature is now also available on cells everywhere.
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Still have a landline. I think something horrible will happen if I get rid of it. Piece of mind for $20/mo!
I have a land line I for 15 bucks a month for all 3 kids that live with us cause fk 300$ cell phone bills.
i adore this! still have a landline, and still do the collect calls LOL
We only recently got rid of ours, and I regret it when I'm trying to talk to my mom on the iPhone. It's like having a conversation to the moon or something with the delay. Or having to walk around the house to find a strong enough signal.
You may still have a landline, but there's no such thing as busy signals.
Mother just canceled ours about a month ago. We figured we both have cell phones, and we didn't use the landline that much. Wasn't worth the extra cost.
we have a landline 📞 for 911 emergencies only ((thankfully NOT something we have to use for extensive long periods of time))
Operators, if you needed to find a business or residential listing or just the time you called the operator.
also when talking about phones. We had a "ring me" culture in my country when mobile phones started. You called your friend but they did not pick it up as we were charged per minute. If they rang you you knew they are on the way and you should meet them. Or you rang your mother and she called you back as she had enough money to pay the bill and you were saving your credit. call and not pick up was for free
At a pay phone, my bro, sis and I had a code. Mom already knew where we were since she dropped us off. We'd call, listen for the ring twice then hang up. Did it again. Quarter always came back. She knew we were ready -- didn't have to say the words. Used the same quarter for YEARS!
My Godmother lived in another city 2 hours away in the '60's and 70's, and when she'd come to visit, she would call collect as a way to let my mom know she was on her way. My mom told us at a young age to always decline the collect call.
We still have our landline. Mom disconnected my number from Jr High though.
Still have a landline as mobile reception is so bad at our place. Yes, actual landline. Although at one point it used to pop up and run along someone's fence for a few metres. Rain played havoc with it
In Australia it was 1800REVERSE but I never used it. I did have to keep a phone card in my bag for the first year of highschool as I wasn't allowed a mobile until I turned 14.
I got rid of mine when my kids became old enough to have their own phones. FTR: I was not one of those parents that thought it right to buy young kids a cell. My kids got theirs when they graduated gr. 8. For my daughter, that was about 1.5 yes ago :)
In my country landlines were ridicously expensive. Saw a coulpe of news about families having to sell the family car because the daughter talked 5 to 7 hours a day with her friends and the bill came to thousands.
I’m having to scroll really far without seeing this… but TIVO.
If you had one of those it was like cable television, satellite tv, and your VCR recorder had an AI baby. There was so much power in consumers hands for the first time in the television business.
Did your company pay for a catchy jingle, professional actors, camera equipment, writers and pay extra to roll it on a prime time slot?…. Doesn’t matter anymore suckers I had a TIVO. And all it took was that little familiar “bah-DOOK” from my remote to %100 skip commercials.
More than that, competitions for national tv ratings were skewed. I could watch House while Bones recorded on another Chanel at the same time.
With a TiVo I could keep a massive library of cable reruns OF MY CHOICE. That thing was short lived as actual streaming shook up the industry more and phased TiVo out, but TiVo had a solid 10 years of being the shiz.
spiraldinosaur said:
Askjeeves/Lycos/Yahoo.
TrinixDMorrison replied:
I remember my grandma was convinced that you had to word your searches in the form of a question for AskJeeves to work properly.
ElixirofVitriol replied:
TBF this is the way I was taught to use AskJeeves in elementary school.
92894952620273749383 replied:
Proper phrasing gives the algorithim the proper context. Google said [screw] it lets do page rank.
NewsProducing said:
PlayStation 2
It was the hottest thing in 2000.
FishSauceFogMachine replied:
Ah yes, the year my parents told everyone I was into "games" because I'd asked for a PS2, and I got three copies of Monopoly for Christmas.
Worst Christmas ever.
Academic-Motor said:
Winamp.
Transmatrix replied:
It really whips the llama’s ass.
papaweir said:
Geocities, NeoPets, LiveJournal, and Kazaa.
goblinsexologist replied:
Neopets don’t die though, I logged in after a long time and my neopet was starving, so I fed it a piece of the omelette and he said “yuck I don’t like omelettes” so I logged off and let the sassy little bat starve for another 10 years.
j-u-n-i replied:
Geocities was so powerful for the time. I used to build my website there, steal the html and use it for my own domain. This was pre-social media. If you wanted to share your weird goth poetry and fuzzy webcam selfies, you had to have your own website. Using the steeling html method for years eventually taught me how to write it.
PacMan8122 said:
AOL.
BicyclingBabe replied:
Not to my parents! They both still use [it] for their internet email and browser.
*pops up inconveniently* I see you're trying to hurt Mr. Clippy. Can I help?
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I downloaded it a few weeks ago to try again, 'cos it was my favorite. Well, 4k screen doesn't help - I can barely see the tiny game screen and the ball seems to be teleporting rather than bouncing. :/
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Something that I've heard a lot of schools don't do anymore; teaching kids how to type properly! Seems KINDA important. We had all Mac computers in my school, and I learned on All the Right Type. Dinosaur of a program now, but it worked! I miss pre- OS X mac programs, they were SO much easier to use and navigate. If you got yourself Resedit, you could modify some games' images and sounds. Great fun.
Over 20 years ago I had an optional school subject to learn typing over two years; first year typing on a typewriter (was the last class to do so) and second year typing and office software on a PC. I use that stuff every day and am thankful for having had that option.
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What's with the weird formatting? Did BP get in trouble for screenshotting reddit threads, so now is reduced to retyping everything?
When I was at a friend's house set one up for me. I promptly forgot about it and never went on again. I also didn't get FB until about 2009 when another friend set it up, purely because I kept missing invitations to things after finishing high school because they were all FB event invites.
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My computer encyclopedia on cds... OR CLIPART CDs omg I had tons lol
Still got my clipart CDs and the clipart is, yes, very 1990s.
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No one said actual dating. Like face to face, meeting someone while grabbing lunch or at happy hour?
Anyone remember the last time they did basically this exact same post 100 times?
OKAY PEOPLE!!! NO ONE MENTIONED WEB-TV. I still have mine including the keyboard!
😂😂😂 I remember in my first apartment having web TV for like a week 😂😂😂😂 totally forgot about it till you mentioned it!!!
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What do you mean, we STILL send Jacquie Lawson e cards ...I got one yesterday. I have a password to her site.
How about that generation of cars & trucks. Had the efficiency of EFI without the sh!tfest of pointless gee-gaws of pseudo-luxury shovelled into modern cars. Also could still be fixed with general mechanical skill and an OBD-II reader. Have owned a few of this generation, and most still ran fine at over 300k-km (almost 200k-mi). Have an '01 Golf that has 550000km and still runs fine.
never mind; misread the title; please ignore my post above
Load More Replies... Personal email address, Doom, Dungeon Hack, dumb terminals at the university, message boards
Water Fountains. Water bottles kinda replaced them and now Covid has probably killed them off.
How about editing your config.sys and autoexec.bat files to optimize windows' 640KB of conventional memory? I got really good at this by Y2K.
Prepaid and/or authorized company work cards for long distance calls when on the road. You would call an 800 number then your number then a code.
*pops up inconveniently* I see you're trying to hurt Mr. Clippy. Can I help?
Load More Replies... I downloaded it a few weeks ago to try again, 'cos it was my favorite. Well, 4k screen doesn't help - I can barely see the tiny game screen and the ball seems to be teleporting rather than bouncing. :/
Load More Replies... Something that I've heard a lot of schools don't do anymore; teaching kids how to type properly! Seems KINDA important. We had all Mac computers in my school, and I learned on All the Right Type. Dinosaur of a program now, but it worked! I miss pre- OS X mac programs, they were SO much easier to use and navigate. If you got yourself Resedit, you could modify some games' images and sounds. Great fun.
Over 20 years ago I had an optional school subject to learn typing over two years; first year typing on a typewriter (was the last class to do so) and second year typing and office software on a PC. I use that stuff every day and am thankful for having had that option.
Load More Replies... What's with the weird formatting? Did BP get in trouble for screenshotting reddit threads, so now is reduced to retyping everything?
When I was at a friend's house set one up for me. I promptly forgot about it and never went on again. I also didn't get FB until about 2009 when another friend set it up, purely because I kept missing invitations to things after finishing high school because they were all FB event invites.
Load More Replies... My computer encyclopedia on cds... OR CLIPART CDs omg I had tons lol
Still got my clipart CDs and the clipart is, yes, very 1990s.
Load More Replies... No one said actual dating. Like face to face, meeting someone while grabbing lunch or at happy hour?
Anyone remember the last time they did basically this exact same post 100 times?
OKAY PEOPLE!!! NO ONE MENTIONED WEB-TV. I still have mine including the keyboard!
😂😂😂 I remember in my first apartment having web TV for like a week 😂😂😂😂 totally forgot about it till you mentioned it!!!
Load More Replies... What do you mean, we STILL send Jacquie Lawson e cards ...I got one yesterday. I have a password to her site.
How about that generation of cars & trucks. Had the efficiency of EFI without the sh!tfest of pointless gee-gaws of pseudo-luxury shovelled into modern cars. Also could still be fixed with general mechanical skill and an OBD-II reader. Have owned a few of this generation, and most still ran fine at over 300k-km (almost 200k-mi). Have an '01 Golf that has 550000km and still runs fine.
never mind; misread the title; please ignore my post above
Load More Replies... Personal email address, Doom, Dungeon Hack, dumb terminals at the university, message boards
Water Fountains. Water bottles kinda replaced them and now Covid has probably killed them off.
How about editing your config.sys and autoexec.bat files to optimize windows' 640KB of conventional memory? I got really good at this by Y2K.
Prepaid and/or authorized company work cards for long distance calls when on the road. You would call an 800 number then your number then a code.
