21 Forgotten Websites From The Early 2000s

Buzz Feed

3 days ago

TikTok, Instagram, and social media as a whole have definitely taken a toll on today's youth. They'll never understand the struggles of the early internet, when nothing was at your fingertips, and high-speed connections were a luxury. The internet was a weird, clunky place. Not nearly as all-consuming as it is now, but those early browsing days laid the groundwork for the kinds of communities we now see on modern platforms.
Back then, followers weren't the metric for anything, mostly because no one was being followed. Technically, you were making "friends," whether it was strangers you added to your Top 8 on MySpace or people with cool Neopets you kept tabs on.
Those early internet days truly shaped our online lives. In a lot of ways, they made us more grateful for the instant access we have now. Napster and LimeWire basically walked so Spotify could run, if we're being honest. But there's something deeply nostalgic about that bare-bones version of the web — messy, slow, and full of personality.
I recently stumbled across a post on r/AskReddit where someone asked, 'What's an early Internet site kids these days will never know?' From pre-Google search engines to flash game havens, here are 21 of the most beloved early internet websites people are reminiscing about:
"Addicting Games."
"Ask Jeeves."
"I remember I held out on Google for a long time because I used a site called Dogpile. Edit: Just checked and it's still running. Very cool, maybe I will have to go back to my roots."
"Homestar Runner."
"Geocities."
"The old Cartoon Network website. Treasure trove of games. I, for one, had a blast making my own Codename: Kids Next Door ID and printing it at my mom's office. Color and all."
"I still have an Angelfire site online from the mid-to-late '90s. Have no password for it, no idea how to access it. I think the page counter stopped counting."
"Ebaum's World."
"I really wish the old Candystand was still around. I want to play Lifesavers mini-golf again for the nostalgia. I still remember learning about it in study hall because a teacher let one of the football stars play Candystand mini-golf on the smart board. I went home and immediately pulled it up on the family PC to start my own addiction to Candystand. They had so many great games I could play that were way more fun than writing a 20-page Shakespearean tragedy."
"MetaCrawler. My first was good ol' webcrawler in '96."
"Napster. The original."
"StumbleUpon was such a gem. I don't know if it was because the internet was smaller back then, but it was so much easier to find diverse, but quality content. These days it feels like we're stuck to platforms that provide specific types of content and little control over the algorithm."
"Even after Google came out, I stuck it out with AltaVista for a long time; I was convinced it would make the long haul over Google, even though almost all my friends had been sold already. 😅"
"I still remember the song, something like, 'TO STAY ALIVE I FIGHT FOR BREATH, THEN AGAIN I DIE IN STICK DEATH, I DIE IN STICK DEATH.'"
"Bored.com was not blocked when I worked at a call center, so that made the workdays possible."
"Anyone remember JoeCartoon?"
"Obvious pick: MySpace."
"'You can do anything...at zombocom...the only limit is you. Welcome, you. YES YOU...to zombocom.'"
"Neopets."
"Awwww I miss ThinkGeek so much, they had such cool shit"
"Miniclip (still exists but looks nothing like what it used to look like back in 2008/2009). With smartphones and apps you can install directly, I somehow doubt kids are using Miniclip or websites like it. Not to mention flash games are sort of dead since the end of Adobe, from what I've understood."
Do you remember any of these long-forgotten websites? Let's reminisce in the comments.