Over the weekend the US TikTok community was saying its final goodbyes, only for the app to make a speedy resurrection a few hours after it was ‘banned’. While many of us rejoiced over its return, over on Reddit users were getting a little sentimental, remembering the beloved social media platforms that weren’t so lucky.
Whether it’s that signature Y2K website design or the fresh spirit of the blooming Internet age, there’s something magical about the early digital world. Admittedly we might be blinded by nostalgia, but nothing beats the Wild West that was the early internet. From chatrooms to flash games, get ready for a trip down memory lane.
Over on the r/Millennials subreddit, users were asked the simple question: “What’s the program, website, or app that you still mourn?”. Naturally, the usual suspects like AOL and MySpace were mentioned, while others reminisced on the morally questionable days of music downloading via Napster and Limewire.
As a Gen Z elder, even some of my long-lost favourites like Vine, Tumblr and Habbo Hotel received honourable mentions. For Creative Bloq’s Design Editor Daniel John, early social media acted as a (carefully curated) window to the soul. “With 4K cameras and entire editing suites in their pockets, ‘content’ has never been easier to create than it is for social media users in 2025. But when it comes to pure, unadulterated creative expression, nothing comes close to picking the perfect emo song lyric as a username and adorning it with a bunch of symbols and emoticons until it’s practically illegible. I miss you, MSN,” he says.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
It seems what millennials miss most about the early internet is a sense of community. With forums and small dedicated communities appearing on niche sites, finding your people was far more accessible (given you knew where to look). “I just miss the old internet in general. I liked it better when websites were specialized toward one thing instead of being a big umbrella for all things and fostering a bunch of sub communities,” one user noted. “Traditional forums were just way better culturally than Reddit. the bonds you made with other regulars was stronger and it actually felt like each forum was its own community,” another user added.
“It’s not a single app I miss, but rather that so many sites used to have message boards and comment sections, and now those are gone. A small, conspiratorial corner of my brain thinks certain people didn’t like that there were so many places on the internet for people to communicate with each other, and wanted to “consolidate” such communication in key easily observed sites,” one user theorised.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Nostalgia aside, there was an intangible essence that made the early internet so fondly remembered by many. Perhaps we look at the past with rose-tinted glasses, but we can never recreate a time when the internet felt so personal and charmingly juvenile. While we may have almost everything at our fingertips in this digital age, it’s wholesome to look back at a time when the internet truly felt like a community.
For more throwback news, check out the Web Design Museum – a website dedicated to the early internet’s iconic UI. If you’re after more nostalgia, take a look at the YouTube archive website that sucked me down a nostalgic rabbit hole.
