a love letter to the 2000s internet ♡

Hello hello again!! welcome back to another one of my little rambles!!

Soooo, i've been wanting to write about this particular topic for a while because there's something about the old internet that i find SO incredibly interesting. the aesthetics, the websites, the graphics, the music, EVERYTHING. i genuinely think i could spend hours looking through old screenshots and browsing archived websites.

I wasn't really around to experience most of the 2000s internet firsthand, which is kinda funny considering how much i adore it. BUT i've spent quite a bit of time exploring what it was like, looking at old personal websites, blogs, profiles and all sorts of things from that era. and honestly, i think i've developed a little obsession.

♡ the internet used to have SO much personality

one of my favourite things about the old internet is how personal everything seemed to be. people had their own websites, customised profile pages, little blogs, guestbooks and all sorts of other stuff. you could tell so much about someone just by looking at their page.

their favourite colours, music, interests, favourite characters, random pictures they'd collected... it was basically a small digital representation of themselves.

I especially love the idea of having your own personal website where you could just put whatever you wanted. no particular theme you had to follow, no pressure to make everything look perfect. just a bunch of shit you liked, thrown together in one place cuz WHY NOT?

and i think that's something i really miss about the internet, even though i didn't get to experience it properly myself.

♡ THE GRAPHICS. OH MY GOD.

can we PLEASE talk about the graphics???

the glittery buttons, pixel art, stamps, blinkies, tiny icons, super colorful backgrounds, little cursors and those ridiculously decorated webpages. i love aaall of it.

I don't think people understand how much i enjoy looking at old website layouts. sometimes you'd find a page with probably 17 different fonts, 5 different colours and about a million little gifs scattered everywhere. Was it visually organised? questionable. Did it have personality? ABSOLUTELY.

I also love how people would collect little graphics and put them on their profiles. It almost feels like collecting stickers and decorating a scrapbook, except it's all digital.

I've always liked things that feel a little cluttered and personal, so i guess it's not surprising that i'm so drawn to this aesthetic.

♡ personal websites and little internet diaries

another thing i really love is the whole concept of personal blogging.

people would write about their days, share their interests, post pictures, talk about their favourite things and basically document whatever was happening in their lives. and i find that SO charming.

I think there's something really nice about having a little place on the internet where you can just exist without worrying about making everything interesting or appealing to everyone else.

which is prolly one of the reasons i wanted to make a FriendRewind account in the first place hehe. (Spacehey too lolz)

I LOOVE being able to customise my profile, add little decorations, write about things i enjoy and make everything feel like my own. it's honestly such a fun little creative outlet.

♡ i miss an era i never really experienced

this is probably the funniest part about my whole obsession. i wasn't really there for most of it, yet somehow i find myself feeling nostalgic for it???

i think it's less about missing the actual decade and more about being drawn to the atmosphere surrounding it. the music, the fashion, the technology, the games, the websites and all the little things that made that era what it was.

obviously, the internet back then wasn't PERFECT, and i'm sure there were plenty of frustrating things about it too. i'm not pretending everything was magically better just because it was older.

BUT there's something about the creativity and individuality of those old websites that i really admire. everything felt a little more personal, a little more experimental and a little less concerned with looking exactly like everything else.

♡ anyway, that's my little ramble!!

I think that's all i have to say for now. i just really really love the old internet aesthetic and the whole idea of having your own little corner of the web.

I'd love to collect MORE AND MORE graphics, experiment with different layouts, customise my pages and maybe make more little blog entries like this one.

I guess this is my own tiny attempt at recreating a little piece of that experience.

Here's to glitter graphics, pixel hearts, ridiculous amounts of GIFs, personal websites and having absolutely no idea what you're doing with your HTML.

-nugget