Welcome to my shrine of early aughts.
I'm in the older portion of the "Zoomer" demographic, meaning I'm not old enough to have actively participated in Myspace edgelord subculture, but I'm old enough to have had the experience of owning a CRT, getting lost at the mall, and having a full body response to the phrase "the computer room."
OG Xbox & PS2 era video games, mall goth / baby bat culture, that weird period where teenage boys and young men were running around in fedoras with samurai swords, and everything inbetween will be cultivated and archived here. It's true what they say about nostalgia being a drug, I can't get enough of this shit.
I'm in the older portion of the "Zoomer" demographic, meaning I'm not old enough to have actively participated in Myspace edgelord subculture, but I'm old enough to have had the experience of owning a CRT, getting lost at the mall, and having a full body response to the phrase "the computer room."
OG Xbox & PS2 era video games, mall goth / baby bat culture, that weird period where teenage boys and young men were running around in fedoras with samurai swords, and everything inbetween will be cultivated and archived here. It's true what they say about nostalgia being a drug, I can't get enough of this shit.
GAMES
(^^ Some lucky guy getting the OG Xbox console during the launch event, fresh off the presses from Bill Gates himself in the year 2000.)
I didn't really grow up attatched to a lot of games, nor has the premise of hardcore gaming really interested me. There were definitely games I played, loved, and still enjoy to this day, but not to the point of understanding why "console wars" are a thing or enough to care about whether or not video games are "considered art". I was way more of an anime nerd, tuning in for Toonami on weekends, collecting Naruto trading cards, and looking forward to my monthly subcscriptions of Shonen Jump magazine. As I said though, nostalgia is a hell of a drug. I still love my Xbox 360 and debate every week on whether or not buying a PSP would be worth it. I actually just bought Guitar Hero off Ebay a couple days ago.
The first "console" I had was a Gameboy Advanced, and the only game I had on it was some Go Diego Go game that taught you how to count. I think my mom only got it to shut me up while I sat in on her night classes. It worked, but I can't say I'm any better at math than I was back then.
All consoles after this were for the family. My grandma had a PS2, I got a Nintendo Wii for Christmas when I was 7, and my dad got a PS3 when I was 10. Day in and day out, I would watch my brothers go to town on Halo Zelda and Silent Hill. The games I can say I was really attatched to during these periods were probably Mortal Kombat 2, Tony Hawk's Underground, Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam, Skate, the Devil May Cry franchise, every Naruto fighting game, and, of course, Guitar Hero.
I also have vague memories of gaming ads during this time. Some of this shit was wild. Definitely shouldnt've been peddled to kids, but also definitely awoke some shit in me. The ads for Bloodrayne and Hitman are permanently seared into my mind.
MUSIC
Something I can say about this period is that it was a very...interesting time for music. And I was listening to a lot of it. Youtube (before the plagues known as "influencers" and "Twitch Streamers" hit the scene) and torrenting sites like The Pirate Bay and Rutracker were my best friends, the former because I could listen to music while updating my profiles on various roleplay sites, the latter because I was the only kid in my class who knew how to torrent and burn CDs, so I always had easy gifts for friends and cute girls I wanted to impress. Ahhh, memories.Anyway, this was the period where rock was coming to a steady but certain decline. Nu Metal was starting to lose its edge and more people were shifting to Hip Hop and R&B. I got a little bit of everything cus all my tastes were secondhand from my parents and older siblings, but rock and metal have always spoken to me more, and that's probably pretty true to this day. Linkin Park, Skillet, Breaking Benjamin, Three Days Grace, Static-X, Powerman 5000, Thousand Foot Krutch, Disturbed, and Thirty Seconds to Mars were in my constant rotation in those days, and I thought I was so damn cool for it.
(^^ these were two of the few posters I had in my childhood bedroom. Before internet shopping was really a thing, you basically had to yoink everything you loved from magazines and Walmart poster bins.)
I was delighted when I saw kids on the internet were getting into this shit, making it a statement and everything. Pretty cute.
FASHION & SUBCULTURE
This is the portion of the aughts I feel like I didn't appreciate enough. And even if I could have, it was at the tail end of the decade, so it's not like I got the whole deal.I think fashion and youth subculture during this period was at its peak. I mean. Come on.
(^I would KILL for all the shirts in the bottom row here. What do you even type in to find shirts designs like this?)
(^Check out these lovebirds, fashion AND relationship goals, ammirite?)
(^This one just makes me nostalgiac. Sure wish they still made shirts like that.)
And lest we forget
Otherwise known as the greatest thing to ever happen to fashion. They're comfortable, make you stand out, and go with just about any band shirt. Who doesn't love letting everyone 3 miles outward that they're in the vicinity by the jingle of the chains on their pants? And all those pockets? God. There would be no war if everyone was entitled to a pair of Tripp Pants from birth.
