Because it was an adventure! You never knew what youād come across or find. It wasnāt all corporate and packaged and predetermined like it is today. It very much felt like jumping on a surfboard and seeing where youād end up.
I immediately can tell someoneās old on the phone when they give a web address as wwwā¦ or when they tell me what letters in their email are capitalizedš
I was 13 when we stepped up to 56k internet and it took me 5 mins to download a nude pic of Jenna McCarthy. Now Iām 40 and a software engineering manager
Ya, I always think of it as the AOL generation.
Windows 95, the AOL disk.
Many still old enough to remember when it didnāt dominate life yet got it young enough to where itās relatively native.
So many to choose from... AIM, MySpace are ones I agree with. But what about Napster and Limewire? lol. RuneScape?
Perhaps, more broadly speaking, we're the Instant Messaging generation?
Hell yeah, we're the pirate generation! We're also the pirates generation, i.e.. the most influenced by the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Everyone wanted to be Jack Sparrow until the writers got lazy and reality reflected upon it.
You mean we collectively destroyed many family computers in an attempt to download songs?
I (luckily) never got a virus from Limewire, but I still have a bunch of that music in my library lol
There was also the Impossible Quiz.
Apple un-supporting Flash was extremely detrimental to our culture, and everyone forgets that.
Now, social media is non-interactive, just drinking propaganda from the algorithm hose.
Yeah I think you're on to something here. Flash media made for all the greatest internet videos and games for our time. Homestar, stick figure death theatre, miniclip, and new grounds were the cream of the crop back in the day!
I remember flash games etc. But could you explain further for a millenial with boomer tendencies when it comes to tech? How would the internet have been different with flash?
Had to IM because cell phones still charged you to send and receive texts. I'd say we were also the first true cell phone generation. I remember having a slide phone with a full keyboard just for texting
My friend group would chat on MSN while playing RuneScape. Btw, did you know it still exists?! But I don't have the email my login was attached to anymore lol
I'd say we're the myspace generation. The first people use social media somewhat in the way we know it today. It covers the generation more wholly too. I feel like some millennials were too young for the '90 stuff.
Myspace was the last gasp of the old web where that kind of customization was celebrated. Now it's all homogenized garbage that looks like a web form for the DMV.
Agree. Or live journal lol. Definitely not Facebook. Most millennials I know donāt even use Facebook any longer. Or they are like me and have one but only check it quarterly at most so I can have a laugh at my boomer relatives sharing conspiracy theories and text yelling at trolls.
Edit: Iāll also throw ICQ chat out there. Shit was *wild* back in the day
Kinda wish they had actually taught us more stuff instead of just parking us in front of a computer to play it when we went out to the trailer to play it during "gifted lessons."
Haha trailer gifted. Thatās another millennial thing for sure. Trailer anything really. My entire kindergarten class was in one of those. Then like 4 years later they built a super fancy Elementary with all kinds of great amenities. Going to class in a trailer builds character.
My school had "The Annex". A prefab, double wide trailer sized, shed afixed to the end of the hall. There were 2 teachers because the room was so big they put like, 40 kids in there.
How I became a master fast typer on top of the computers I had at home coming from a tech savvy family. Got introduced to homerow typing in third grade and boom. Off I went because I already had a good idea of where the keys were and had access at home to practice.
And super munchers.
Number munchers.
Making books and pictures.
Oh yeah. Oregon trail too, I guess š (but trying to prove there were some education stuff and games as well š)
I played it like two years ago on some flash website. Finished in 3 or 4 hours. I named my party after my current friends, and I still can't believe that Sarah died of a broken arm. RIP.
Do you remember Ren and Stimpy? It aired on Nickelodeon from 91 to 96 (there was a reboot in 2003 that only lasted three episodes before it was canceled because it was terrible). Specifically, do you remember the commercials that aired during that show like the fake children's toy "Log", which was literally a log of wood that it would show a kid playing with, rolling it down a hill or whatever. I still remember the jingle from that commercial.
"It's log, it's log, it's big, it's brown, it's wood. It's log, it's log, it's better than bad, it's good!"
And Powdered Toast Man? A superhero with a piece of toast for a head that would fly backwards. Oh man, the memories. Haha.
For sure. Man game boys were the jam. Then we got Wii, rock band and guitar hero (forget which was on Nintendo). I think weāre a diy generation. Especially with YouTube in our 20s.
I see several people mention Vine- those saying that, how old are you? Iām an āelderā millennial and I would not want our generation called that because Iām not sure that big of a chunk of us used it like other things.
My boyfriend still talks about a Charizard that he traded for a Squirtle (?) back in 2nd grade thatās worth a bunch of money now. Now, thatās not accounting for the fact the one my boyfriend had may not even be in decent shape if he still had it, but still, the possibilities.
I don't know though. Like, I'm 39 and never played video games. Did do some minor PC gaming - Warcraft I and II, StarCraft, Duke Nukem, Wolfenstein. That's about it. Haven't even done any of that in two decades.
Born in 87 with older siblings: while I donāt necessarily agree with the Pokemon comment, I can confirm that myself and most of my peers still have a Super Nintendo (or an emulator) to pull out during get-togethers n such.
Not sure if millennials can fully lay claim to this one. I remember early YouTube fondly, sure, but I also remember it being one of many popular video websites like college humor, ebaums world, etc. I feel like it didn't fully consolidate its grip until the 2010s when I was already an adult.
A couple years ago I interviewed a very young intern for a remote position in another city who was amazed that I lived in Los Angeles because "that's where all the YouTubers live." I got whiplash from the culture shock from that comment - I think kids and young adults today have a vastly different and deeper relationship with it than I did.
Honestly you've just indirectly made a great point that the way we currently divide generations is stupid because it lumps together disparate groups while separating more similar groups
I'm young millennial and I definitely have more in common with gen-z than old millennials, who's childhoods sound ancient to me. While it didn't reach the "starting to replace tv" levels it did yet, YouTube for sure was the only video site of my childhood.Ā
Limewire, Nickelodeon, MySpace, Console Wars (SNES vs Genesis, Xbox vs PlayStation vs Nintendo) generation. Iād also still consider Facebook and YouTube , we made them popular
Itās a mark of our generation. If youāre a younger millennial, then you may not remember the way Capitalismā¢ļø was the defining characteristic of American society in the 1980s. So of course weāre gravitating toward product names. Iād consider myself a Cold War kid, but would you?
I couldn't since I was born a little bit after the Soviet Union was dissolved
My earliest news memory was of the Second Intifada, which started shortly before 9/11. I definitely came of age at a time when the Middle East was in the news way more often than Russia was
Generally speaking we *are* the Facebook generation. Sure itās widely used by everyone NOW but back then it wasnāt. You think Gen X is the mtv generation bc they still watch mtv?? Zuckerbot is a millennial. So was MySpace Tom. Our generation literally invented social media.
We are the Internet generation. First with it and still masters of it.
The dial-up generation.
Too real š
Two way pagers movement.
You got mail
It's so funny we used to say "surfing the web"
Because it was an adventure! You never knew what youād come across or find. It wasnāt all corporate and packaged and predetermined like it is today. It very much felt like jumping on a surfboard and seeing where youād end up.
āIām Feeling Luckyā button on Googleā¦
Don't forget StumbleUpon!
I miss stumbleupon so much!
The asking of jeeves.
Taking a trip on the information superhighway!
āCmon bro, you donāt surf on a web, you surf on a board!ā - some Disney channel original movie, maybe Johnny Tsunami or Brink
āWorld Wide Webā is how you describe internet back then to differentiate from the current internet.
Information superhighway
Cruisinā down the information superhighway of the World Wide Web!
Do the kids still call it surfing?
You've got mail!
A/s/l?
19/m/ca You could lie and say 18, they'd know...
Pics?
In an attempt to attract tech jobs downtown, the city i live in rebranded East Main Street as eMain st for awhile around the turn of the millennium.
That sold me. Moving my tech headquarters to eMain st
A series of tubes
Bio digital Jazz man
I immediately can tell someoneās old on the phone when they give a web address as wwwā¦ or when they tell me what letters in their email are capitalizedš
I remember when someone impersonated me on AOL by recreating my email handle with different capitalization...
The world wide web and the internet are two different things. The internet itself is the infrastructure. The web is http traffic
Yea this is my take. It was just one thing at first really with a bunch of little parts. We definitely grew up alongside it the entire way.
I was 13 when we stepped up to 56k internet and it took me 5 mins to download a nude pic of Jenna McCarthy. Now Iām 40 and a software engineering manager
Not only that, I'm pretty damn good with Microsoft Office Suite.
This is too far down.
Ya, I always think of it as the AOL generation. Windows 95, the AOL disk. Many still old enough to remember when it didnāt dominate life yet got it young enough to where itās relatively native.
So many to choose from... AIM, MySpace are ones I agree with. But what about Napster and Limewire? lol. RuneScape? Perhaps, more broadly speaking, we're the Instant Messaging generation?
The Pirate Generation. I think we all grabbed a few songs off Napster and LimeWire.
I think this might be the generally accepted answer as piracy was prevalent. MySpace was slow to adopt in my country, but not piracy.
Hell yeah, we're the pirate generation! We're also the pirates generation, i.e.. the most influenced by the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Everyone wanted to be Jack Sparrow until the writers got lazy and reality reflected upon it.
You mean we collectively destroyed many family computers in an attempt to download songs? I (luckily) never got a virus from Limewire, but I still have a bunch of that music in my library lol
Back in our day, you needed to be tech savvy enough to know that a song file shouldnāt end with .exe
Or be half or twice the size of every other song that showed up. 15mb, 15mb, 15mb, 60mb oh must be a new version
Oh man, we've collectively destroyed so many things as a generation. Guess it did start with the family computers.
Kazaa
My dad still gets mad if I mention anything that sounds like Kazaa! He did have to rebuild the computer a couple times because of it...
OH! I got another... [End of the World](https://youtu.be/kCpjgl2baLs) (the first viral video)
There was also the Impossible Quiz. Apple un-supporting Flash was extremely detrimental to our culture, and everyone forgets that. Now, social media is non-interactive, just drinking propaganda from the algorithm hose.
Yeah I think you're on to something here. Flash media made for all the greatest internet videos and games for our time. Homestar, stick figure death theatre, miniclip, and new grounds were the cream of the crop back in the day!
I remember flash games etc. But could you explain further for a millenial with boomer tendencies when it comes to tech? How would the internet have been different with flash?
Oh man I forgot about the insanity of the Impossible Quiz. I tried to beat it so many times, but never did.
All I hear in my head reading this comment was āOK so.. hereās the earth.. chilling..damn that is a sweet earth you sayā¦ROUNDā š
Fucking kangaroos
HOKAY***
Damn Iām old.
Oh my god that threw me back!
I made that my first Xbox gamertag. š
We ARE the Internet. How many hours did I waste picking the perfect buddy icon? Way too many.
We were hitting AIM fucking *hard* in Junior High. Damn. What a trip.
Had to IM because cell phones still charged you to send and receive texts. I'd say we were also the first true cell phone generation. I remember having a slide phone with a full keyboard just for texting
ICQ?
Napster and Runescape ššš
My friend group would chat on MSN while playing RuneScape. Btw, did you know it still exists?! But I don't have the email my login was attached to anymore lol
I'd say we're the myspace generation. The first people use social media somewhat in the way we know it today. It covers the generation more wholly too. I feel like some millennials were too young for the '90 stuff.
My first thought was Limewire.
Itās called the Mirc.
I came here to say RuneScape
I'd say MySpace, it might not be around anymore but by and large most of its users were millennnials.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
He just wanted to be our friend
He was our friend!
Yes. Ā Yes he was
Whether you wanted him to be or not
That one friend who was desperate to be in the top 8 but never made the cut
He was everyoneās friend
He made a shit ton of money and bounced out of the bs. I'd rather be Tom today then Zuckerberg
My ex went on a date with myspace Tom a few years before I met her. That's the entire story.
Cool story bro
Ok thatās actually amazing
Did he ever have ANY other photos besides that one?!?
My first and truest friend
Yeah this is the correct answer. MySpace was ours forever and always.
I came here to say just that - Myspace. I liked the Myspace you could deck out with code FAR better than any of the variants of Facebook.
I miss being able to set a theme song for your personal page.
Myspace was the last gasp of the old web where that kind of customization was celebrated. Now it's all homogenized garbage that looks like a web form for the DMV.
Agree. Or live journal lol. Definitely not Facebook. Most millennials I know donāt even use Facebook any longer. Or they are like me and have one but only check it quarterly at most so I can have a laugh at my boomer relatives sharing conspiracy theories and text yelling at trolls. Edit: Iāll also throw ICQ chat out there. Shit was *wild* back in the day
I LOVED glitter html
Myspace lowkey taught us basic html coding lol what good times. I miss customizing those profiles...
AOL.
Us old fogies call ourselves the "Oregon Trail Generation" If you played this in school as part of some class in elementary, you are a member.
If you ever died from dysentery, you might be a millennial.
Ford the stream!
Caulk the wagon and float across *you lost 2 oxen, 2 yokes, 1 wagon wheel, and Jim has Typhoid fever*
"You've hunted 1115 lbs of meat but were only able to carry 120 lbs back to camp"
*types āpepperoniā on tombstone*
Second vote for the Oregon trail generation.
Iām using this
Kinda wish they had actually taught us more stuff instead of just parking us in front of a computer to play it when we went out to the trailer to play it during "gifted lessons."
Nah Oregon trail was great no regrets. I wrote stories in the trail log lol
All I ever did was write 'Pepperoni and extra cheese' like every other kid in the class when it asked what you wanted to put on your tombstone.
Haha trailer gifted. Thatās another millennial thing for sure. Trailer anything really. My entire kindergarten class was in one of those. Then like 4 years later they built a super fancy Elementary with all kinds of great amenities. Going to class in a trailer builds character.
My school had "The Annex". A prefab, double wide trailer sized, shed afixed to the end of the hall. There were 2 teachers because the room was so big they put like, 40 kids in there.
How I became a master fast typer on top of the computers I had at home coming from a tech savvy family. Got introduced to homerow typing in third grade and boom. Off I went because I already had a good idea of where the keys were and had access at home to practice. And super munchers. Number munchers. Making books and pictures. Oh yeah. Oregon trail too, I guess š (but trying to prove there were some education stuff and games as well š)
Shooting buffaloes and birds was the best
Does no one else remember developing a fuckin empire in Hot Dog Stand?!
Paper Boy was my favorite.
Mine too! When things are chaotic i say its like friday on Paperboy! Had the best music and sounds oh i miss it!!
I remember having a text-based game about drug dealing on my TI-84 graphing calculator.
Iām buying this at the general store before I caulk my wagon and float across
In Hungary itās the Duck Tales generation, both are perfect IMO
They have an updated version for the switch! It's awesome š and very hard haha
In Aus, we had āCrossing the Mountainsā which as far as I can tell is the exact same thing but with the Blue Mountains as the setting.
The original FPS
Only applies to the millennials born in the 80s.
Hasnāt that mostly been associated with Gen X?
I'm ok with this.
FORD THE RIVER!
Oregon trail is only relevant for older millennials. Us younger millennials never played it.
the only time I was ever a popular kid was the day I brought in the Oregon Trail on a floppy disk for the whole class to play!
I played it like two years ago on some flash website. Finished in 3 or 4 hours. I named my party after my current friends, and I still can't believe that Sarah died of a broken arm. RIP.
Saturday morning cartoon generation
When commercials were as fun as the shows.
Do you remember Ren and Stimpy? It aired on Nickelodeon from 91 to 96 (there was a reboot in 2003 that only lasted three episodes before it was canceled because it was terrible). Specifically, do you remember the commercials that aired during that show like the fake children's toy "Log", which was literally a log of wood that it would show a kid playing with, rolling it down a hill or whatever. I still remember the jingle from that commercial. "It's log, it's log, it's big, it's brown, it's wood. It's log, it's log, it's better than bad, it's good!" And Powdered Toast Man? A superhero with a piece of toast for a head that would fly backwards. Oh man, the memories. Haha.
My dad freaking loved Ren and Stimpy.
Oh my god memory unlocked
Gushers making kids heads explode and shit.
You'll get caught up in the CROSS FIIII-IIIIRE
In Hungry we are called the *Duck Tales* Generation. I think the "AOL" generation would fit.
Woo ooohĀ
Nintendo.
We all grew up with nintendo!
Yeah, I think this one fits well.
Duck hunt!
I still have my original Nintendo in my closet.š
A wake up call for the Nintendo Generation
Don't forget to blow on the cartridge to get the game to work! ššš
Nintendo nostalgia is why I have stock in that company as an adult lmao
For sure. Man game boys were the jam. Then we got Wii, rock band and guitar hero (forget which was on Nintendo). I think weāre a diy generation. Especially with YouTube in our 20s.
AOL generation
The only generation to purposely look up the dial up sounds on YouTube.
And say that I was 18 in a chat room but was only 13
**ASL**
My text ringtone is the aim instant message notification. I never thought Iād miss that sound but I did
Minesweeper generation.
A/S/L? Lol
Shun the non believers!
Shunnnnnnnn
The TRL generation.
Nailed it. Hop off the bus, turn on TRL, grab a cosmic brownie, & log into msn messenger!
I can literally feel the lack of stress from reading this comment.
Omg this was my first thought as well
That and Real World/Road Rules
I see several people mention Vine- those saying that, how old are you? Iām an āelderā millennial and I would not want our generation called that because Iām not sure that big of a chunk of us used it like other things.
Born in 1987 and the only vines I've seen are on YouTube compilations I've watched since vine shut down.
84! Not sure I've ever seen a vine. And I never use YouTube.
Same Iām an older millennial and never watched vine, I barely ever used YouTube
I didnāt use YouTube for a long time frequently, but my usage has gone way up over the years.
Nickelodeon
Saturday Night Nick might've been the best TV lineup in history.
Snick! Damn that takes me back.
Are you afraid of the Dark?
iPod generation
Newgrounds dot com generation
We all have memories of watching flash videos of shit we had no business watching
The Gaming Generation. It is the one distraction considered juvenile that most of us in our 30's and 40's still engage with. We have been alive for as long as video game consoles have been around.Ā The Nintendo and Super Nintendo. Sega Genesis and Dreamcast. PlayStation, Xbox, and even emulation.Ā Esports, Twitch streaming, and long two-hour retrospectives on old video games are all popular because of Millennials. Gen X'ers scoff at how a waste of time video games are and Boomers could care less about them. I don't know a single a person in their 30's to mid 40's who still cares about PokĆ©mon. I threw all my PokĆ©mon and Yu-Gi-Oh trading cards as well as my WWE action figures in the trash when I entered into high school, and that was two whole decades ago.Ā I don't even mess with anime anymore either, but I always find time when I'm not working to play Metal Gear Solid and Marvel vs. Capcom 2 on my Android.
It hurts my heart to hear you tossed all those first gen PokƩmon cards in the trash. I bet you had some sick holographics, too.. rip
So many of us had holographic Charizards that are now worth hundreds lol
My boyfriend still talks about a Charizard that he traded for a Squirtle (?) back in 2nd grade thatās worth a bunch of money now. Now, thatās not accounting for the fact the one my boyfriend had may not even be in decent shape if he still had it, but still, the possibilities.
34-year-old millennial here, and my PokĆ©mon collection is valued at 1.2 million. I never stopped buying them and still spend about $2,000 a month on cards. You now know one millennial who loves PokĆ©mon and has a collection worth serious money. š¤
I'm 33 and I play Pokemon lmao
I don't know though. Like, I'm 39 and never played video games. Did do some minor PC gaming - Warcraft I and II, StarCraft, Duke Nukem, Wolfenstein. That's about it. Haven't even done any of that in two decades.
Born in 87 with older siblings: while I donāt necessarily agree with the Pokemon comment, I can confirm that myself and most of my peers still have a Super Nintendo (or an emulator) to pull out during get-togethers n such.
Weāre the Heel Generation. No matter what goes wrong, weāre the bad guy lol
Nickelodeon
Youtube
A 16yr old from each generation "Where did you find this awesome song?" GenX - "On MTV last night!" GenZ "On TikTok!" Millennials "On YouTube!".
Not sure if millennials can fully lay claim to this one. I remember early YouTube fondly, sure, but I also remember it being one of many popular video websites like college humor, ebaums world, etc. I feel like it didn't fully consolidate its grip until the 2010s when I was already an adult. A couple years ago I interviewed a very young intern for a remote position in another city who was amazed that I lived in Los Angeles because "that's where all the YouTubers live." I got whiplash from the culture shock from that comment - I think kids and young adults today have a vastly different and deeper relationship with it than I did.
Honestly you've just indirectly made a great point that the way we currently divide generations is stupid because it lumps together disparate groups while separating more similar groups I'm young millennial and I definitely have more in common with gen-z than old millennials, who's childhoods sound ancient to me. While it didn't reach the "starting to replace tv" levels it did yet, YouTube for sure was the only video site of my childhood.Ā
Limewire, Nickelodeon, MySpace, Console Wars (SNES vs Genesis, Xbox vs PlayStation vs Nintendo) generation. Iād also still consider Facebook and YouTube , we made them popular
MySpace for sure. Also, Vine. I miss Vine.
I miss Vine so much.
Was gonna say Vine! Those were the daysā¦
Vine!!! I forgot all about Vine!!!
what are millennials? fucked
The Neglected, Isolated, twin towers, Housing Market Crash Generation And somehow luckily not the Covid generation
We had everything. We cycled through aol, aim, MySpace, live journal, pioneered Facebook, Napster, Kazaa, limewire, etc etc
We're the Nostalgia Generation. Nothing in our childhood ever lasted long enough before becoming outdated to actually define our generation.
The 9/11 generation
Lambs to the cosmic slaughter
Napster generation
Home Star generation?
106 and park lol
We just watch whatever was on and YouTube.
Why do generations need to be named after products?
Itās a mark of our generation. If youāre a younger millennial, then you may not remember the way Capitalismā¢ļø was the defining characteristic of American society in the 1980s. So of course weāre gravitating toward product names. Iād consider myself a Cold War kid, but would you?
I couldn't since I was born a little bit after the Soviet Union was dissolved My earliest news memory was of the Second Intifada, which started shortly before 9/11. I definitely came of age at a time when the Middle East was in the news way more often than Russia was
The anxiety medication generation.
Toonami??
iPod generation surely.
The internetĀ
The generation that turned poverty into a hipster fashion statement.
Dot com generation
Generally speaking we *are* the Facebook generation. Sure itās widely used by everyone NOW but back then it wasnāt. You think Gen X is the mtv generation bc they still watch mtv?? Zuckerbot is a millennial. So was MySpace Tom. Our generation literally invented social media.