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Finding a solution to an obscure computer problem in a YouTube video recorded with Unregistered Hypercam, Windows XP/Vista background, notepad instructions being typed at 15 WPM, playing Down With the Sickness, Breaking Benjamin, or one of those 009 Sound System songs lol.

I miss AIM. The days where you would race home and log on to see if your crush would come on, and then inevitably not message them if they did. I had the cash register noise set to their screen names.

There was a search engine called like crazy Pete and its tag was faster than a space horse. I remember it took over 4 mins to find a result and there were certain hours where Pete would personally get a result for you.

I was young so I'm not sure how accurate that was but I imagine that it's run by an English man from a computer in his garden shed. From 6-7pm he sits in his shed smoking a pipe and serving people web results.

I really liked "Freeman's Mind" (link to episode 1 from nine years ago). It was super simple, literally just a first-person perspective playthrough the Half-Life games with narration instead of commentary. The narrator acted like the mind of Gordon Freeman and it was really funny. Sort of harkens back to a simpler time on youtube, when 9 minutes of a guy talking as if he were a fictional character while playing a video game was prime content. I remember watching this and in the comments I was begging Ross (the creator) to do Half-Life 2 when he finished with 1.

GameSpy. Finding a server you clicked with. Meeting the other players that frequented there. Joining clans and chatting it up on the forums. So much creativity flowed making banners or avatars the showed off your stats from the server and such.

That video reminds me of You Suck At Photoshop, which actually did teach me a good amount of basic photo editing knowledge.

I was a kid in the 2000's so for me the oldies were playing the flash games on cartoon network, miniclip and armor games. My first real exposure to social media was YouTube 2006-2008 somewhere around there watching Smosh and whatever crap was there back in the day.

God this was a trip down memory lane. Thanks for this. I miss bash.org stuff, maybe some of the old ytmnd stuff, new grounds flash portal, etc.

And IRC…

FenslerFilm's GI Joe PSA Spoofs

playlist

In particular.... https://yewtu.be/watch?v=YlcXposa2I8

Edit:

The company gained a reputation in 2003 for a series of short films which parodied the public service announcement (PSA) safety messages used at the end of every episode of the 1980s animated series G.I. Joe, based on Hasbro's toy line. [...] By 2004, the videos had been considered viral hits, and Hasbro had sent Fensler a cease and desist order.

Wikipedia

newgrounds (The Impossible Quiz, anyone remember the square root of an onion?), Numa Numa, The Evolution of Dance, Shortbits 2, Badger Badger Badger (and other Weebl animations), Onyxia Wipe Animation, bash.org, Stumble Upon (a useful toolbar?!), all sorts of great stuff from that time

Not exactly a fav but I’ll always remember when Omegle was brand new. It was before they had video and it wasn’t full of bots. I was probably around 11 or 12 and I had a convo with someone I vehemently disagreed with some or other topic about. We were friendly tho and continued talking on AIM (friendly, never more) and at some point family came up and he explained how things that my father had done to me was abuse and showed me rainn.org. It was such a huge revelation ofc and led to me telling my family and getting my dad prosecuted. That’s why I like discord sometimes I get that old feeling of genuine convo.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k7FYR72mr0E

Also homestarrunner and foamy the squirrel