GoKawiilHere we are. The part of this post I recall most vividly. The mid-2000s were a phenomenal time in my personal history, as they were my transformative years. As it relates to computing and the internet, this means that the mid-2000s were the years of my utmost exploration, exploitation, and emancipation.
Where do I even start? Perhaps we start with the state of the internet and what exactly was available online. Perhaps this is triggering for certain readers, and I apologize if it is, but it is the way the internet was at the time.
If you wanted to see gruesome videos of executions, suicides, or the pain olympics, all it took was a single search and your search engine would happily return any results relevant to the words you typed.
If you wanted to share information over the internet at this point, you probably had an email from a site like AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, or your ISP (Roadrunner, anyone?). Additionally, at this point, webmail clients were extremely popular and most users would launch the webmail clients from their providers to participate in email.
Those of us who were cool used things like MSN Messenger, AIM, etc. to chat quickly without having to use an email. You could even use little pictures that provided emotional reactions for you! Oh my goodness, what a time.
Figure 3: MSN Messenger Emoticons
Beyond chatting, the next big thing coming in the digital space was gaming. At this time, it was seen as perhaps a silly side-hobby for some. While there may have been some money in it for a few select games, most were not profitable - they were created for other reasons, such as genuine intrigue in mechanics, users' fun, and curiosity.
Games and game companies like Runescape, Miniclip (8 Ball Pool, Agar.io, Doodle Army), Club Penguin, Wizards 101, and more dominated the scene in the mid-2000s.
Beyond gaming, this was the age of users learning how to launch their own blogs, vlogs, websites, and more.
For example, let's look at GeoCities (1994-2009) and Tumblr (2007-present). These websites rapidly evolved the internet's landscape, as they offered a free method for anyone to deploy a website or blog.
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