I miss you.
You weren’t perfect. You were loud, clunky, and a little too obsessed with under-construction GIFs. But you were alive. Messy, chaotic, and full of raw energy. You weren’t trying to be “seamless” or “user-friendly.” You were digital for the sake of digital. And that made you exciting.
You didn’t care about KPIs or engagement metrics. You cared about curiosity. You let us build things just because we could. A dancing baby. A scrolling marquee. An entire homepage dedicated to someone’s cat named Bubbles. None of it made money. Most of it barely made sense. But it made something else: connection.
Even with dial-up speeds that made loading a photo feel like aging in real-time, you delivered. You gave us forums that ran all night, message boards where every post was a declaration, and away messages that doubled as digital poetry. You let the weird kids find each other across states, countries, and continents. You gave all of us the sense that maybe we weren’t the only ones staying up too late writing HTML in Notepad.
You let us explore without optimizing. You didn’t polish the edges off everything. And that friction, that glorious, janky, infuriating friction, is what made the spark.
But it wasn’t just the vibe. You also changed the game.
Napster cracked open the idea that we could get music instantly, not because it was convenient, but because we wanted it. It was access without permission. And it set the tone for everything that came next.
Friendster showed us the internet wasn’t just a tool. It could be a mirror. Real names. Real connections. It didn’t last, but it proved people wanted to be seen.
Then came Blogger and LiveJournal. Suddenly, anyone with a keyboard and a thought could publish. Not content. Just thoughts, emotions, arguments. It wasn’t a feed. It was a confessional.
You didn’t stop there. eBay made commerce feel like a scavenger hunt. Flash made the web feel like a living, breathing cartoon. Kazaa and LimeWire pushed the culture of sharing deeper, even when it broke things. MySpace was your noisy, glittery teenage phase and had more personality than all of modern social media combined. YouTube arrived at the edge of it all and reminded us again. Anyone could broadcast. Not polished. Not branded. Just possible.
And Craigslist? Craigslist was your strange uncle who somehow knew how to get you a couch, a job, and a date. All in the same afternoon.
These weren’t just early-tech companies. They were tectonic shifts. They shaped how we discover, create, connect, and waste time. Most of them wouldn’t get past a pitch meeting today. But they mattered.
You gave us a web that was personal, chaotic, full of wonder, and most importantly, ours.
Now everything is optimized. Tested. Sanded down into sameness. But back then? The internet was a living, breathing thing. It didn’t need a business model. It just needed a modem.
I don’t miss you because you were perfect. I miss you because you were free.
Still buffering, still grateful,
—K
