8 Things We Miss About
the Glory Days of Social Media
8 Things We Miss About
Social media is a lot of things to a lot of different people. It provides us with life necessities like free movies, hilarious memes, news updates, trolling randoms and, of course, stalking our exes. From its first iterations to how we currently enjoy it, social media has come a long way.
Facebook is king. Instagram can now record video views and will be able to host minute-long videos soon. Face-swapping is now a thing. Let’s all step into our respective Deloreans and hold on to a steady internet connection (if that’s even possible in the Philippines) as we take a trip back to a simpler time. From Friendster to Facebook, here are a few things we miss from social media’s glory days.
8. Giving and receiving testimonials on Friendster
“Koya, pahingi ng testi.” Nothing reaffirms your value and makes you feel as good as a testimonial from a friend. There’s also the unspoken rule that once you receive a testimonial, you’re obliged to give one in return. Don’t be a jerk. Besides, you’ll feel good about it after. Just don’t give a lame one full of acronyms.
7. Fixing your top 8 on MySpace
Speaking of reaffirming value and self-worth, being included in a friend’s Top 8 felt awesome. You took time out and meticulously ranked yours, too, because nothing could alienate friends like excluding them out of your Top 8. “So-and-so is in the top five and I’m not. Who the hell does she think she is?” You knew who your real friends were when they ranked you according to importance. Harsh.
Sidenote: what also made MySpace cool was that you had a friend once you joined. Tom welcomed you with his sincere smile. However, Tom could also be a savage and refused to take anyone’s shit:
6. Making a MySpace playlist for your profile was an art form
You had the perfect playlist for your profile. You scoured the internet for hot tracks and there were times that you had to endure a painfully long wait before your song on Limewire was completely downloaded. You’d also make awesome music discoveries on the profiles of other people. Making your playlist was an art form, and you wanted to tell people how deep and profound you were as a human being or how “core” and “scene” you were. You also met other people through these playlists. It was awesome.
5. Fine tuning your Friendster account
Friendster also allowed us to let our freak flag fly. We let people know how unique and special little flowers we were by customizing the hell out of our profiles. Customized background? Check. Seizure-inducing text? Check. We also put a lot of stuff in our favorites, from music, movies, books and more. We wore our hearts on our sleeve (and profile) and we were proud of it.
And who else misses Friendster’s feature that allowed you to check who recently viewed your profile? Stalking really was hard back then, but it was also a great gauge to see for who was interested.
4. Liking every Facebook page that applied to your life
Back before everyone became so carefully curated, we were free to like any and every page that struck our fancy, like “Everyone’s online except the people i actually want to talk to!” or “PRETENDING TO LOOK FOR YOUR HOMEWORK WHEN YOU KNOW YOU DIDNT DO IT” or “I feel a text is too serious without a “lol” or “haha” in there somewhere.”
A lot of us have probably wondered why the hell our liked pages reached 3,000. Well, it’s because of these and because we thought we were so cool for liking them.
3. Yahoo! Messenger becoming your life
Gone were the days when you had to call your friends just to talk to them. Ha! That was so 2002. When you had Yahoo! Messenger, you could talk to your friends for as long as you could (or as long as ISP Bonanza allowed you to) even though you were just with them in school the whole day.
We all probably took 20 minutes to think about the perfect Y!M status that’d make us look cool and hip. The more obscure your status was, the cooler you were.
And seriously, who doesn’t miss this Madonna audible?
Or this guy?
Or this?
2. Uploading like crazy on Multiply
It’s been three years since Multiply.com said goodbye to social media. And if you didn’t know, yep, the photos you worked hard to upload and edit are all gone. You’ve probably also lost the selfies you took during your emo phase—but then, the world is better off without those. Multiply was seriously the shit back then. Raise your hand if you miss your bulletin board!
1. mIRC, the original Y!M
mIRC was the chat platform before Y!M, but what made it a little better is how there were private AND public chat groups where you could talk to random strangers who just wanted a conversation online. But of course, there were trolls (who were called flamers back then) that just wanted to ruin chat groups. That’s when the chat group admin comes in. When you’re an mIRC admin, you were like god. You could kick out any jerk out of the chat group and maintain the peace.
Ah, those were the days. Anyone still down to A/S/L?
What do you miss about the glory days of social media? Sound off in the comments below!
