18 Internet Trends from the 2000s That Are Cringeworthy Now
The Internet in the 2000s was a chaotic wonderland of glittery MySpace pages, cringeworthy memes, and weird trends that once seemed cool but now make us question our life choices.
- Alyana Aguja
- 7 min read
The 2000s web was a free-range, unfiltered playground where MySpace was king, YouTube was at its puberty stage, and cringeworthy trends went viral like hotcakes. From glittery profile personalizations to viral catchphrases like “rawr XD,” we lived for digital anarchy with no embarrassment—only to reflect now and be amazed at what we must’ve been thinking. While certain ones of these trends give us a nostalgic giggle, the rest are totally side-splitting reminders of just how cringey our early internet days were.
1. MySpace Profile Songs and Extremely Personalized Pages
Image from Facebook
MySpace allowed users to express themselves in the worst possible way—with glittering backgrounds, unreadable fonts, and auto-playing music that blared the second someone clicked their profile. Picking the right song was a social statement, and failing to include your best friend in your “Top 8” could start a real-life friendship war. Looking back, our profiles were basically chaotic messes that screamed, “I have no sense of design!”
2. Facebook Poking Wars
Image from Facebook
Facebook’s “poke” function was intended to be a lighthearted method of gaining someone’s attention, but soon, it became a cringeworthy game of virtual tag. Individuals would find themselves stuck in round after round of poke wars with no actual intention beyond who would surrender first. It was particularly strange when some person you barely knew poked you daily like a half-hearted flirting effort.
3. Doom-Laden Chain Emails
Image from HubSpot Blog
“Send this to 10 people, or a ghost will come to see you at midnight!” These ominous chain emails took advantage of our sense of childhood fear, compelling us to send them to everyone we knew. It’s humiliating now to consider that we thought an email could haunt us, but nobody was willing to risk it at the time.
4. Rickrolling Everybody, All the Time
Image from Yahoo
Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up was the internet prank that ruled them when individuals began duping others into clicking deceitful links. It was amusing at first, but soon enough, it became tiring when nearly every other link contained that signature chorus. Rickrolling is a nostalgia thing these days, but during the early days, it was an unrelenting meme that simply wouldn’t kill itself.
5. LOLCats and “I Can Has Cheezburger?”
Image from Wikipedia
The earliest days of internet humor were about cat photos with poorly written captions—because, of course, nothing was more hilarious than a cat requesting a cheeseburger, it seemed. Sites such as I Can Has Cheezburger? went wild, and these goofy captions became the norm for online culture. Although cat memes persist, the original LOLCats style is outdated and cringe-worthy.
6. Cringe-Worthy YouTube Challenges (Such as the Cinnamon Challenge)
Image from Wikipedia
The 2000s saw the rise of some dumb internet trends, including the notorious Cinnamon Challenge, in which individuals tried (and failed) to swallow a spoonful of cinnamon. The participants violently coughed, choked, and even injured their lungs in the process, but millions still gave it a go. Looking back, seeing individuals almost suffocate for internet fame wasn’t as fun as we imagined.
7. Duck Face Selfies
Image from iStock
Eventually, the internet made us believe that puckering our lips like a duck was sexy and cool. The pose was ubiquitous—MySpace, Facebook, early Instagram—and particularly abundant in bathroom mirror selfies. Now, it’s just a sore reminder of how weird we tried to come across on the internet.
8. Edgy and Depressing AIM Away Messages
Image from Boston University
AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) permitted users to have away messages; for some bizarre reason, people used them as personal diaries. Emo song lyrics, passive-aggressive messages to ex-friends, and cryptic attention-seeking cries filled AIM profiles. If you didn’t have a minimum of one angsty message with Linkin Park lyrics, were you even a 2000s teenager?
9. Cringe-Worthy Sparkly GIFs on Forums
Image from Giphy
Animated glitter text was the way to make your forum signature stand out, often accompanied by quotes like “Live. Laugh. Love.” or “You just got owned!” Sites like Blingee made it easy to turn any image into a sparkly abomination. Now, these gaudy, flashing GIFs feel like the digital equivalent of bedazzling everything in your closet.
10. FarmVille Spam on Facebook
Image from NME
During the late 2000s, your Facebook newsfeed was likely full of notifications from friends pleading for help harvesting their virtual crops. FarmVille was a hooking craze, but the incessant game requests were maddening for anyone who had no interest in digital farming. In retrospect, it’s crazy to consider how many people were obsessed with growing pixelated strawberries.
11. The Use of “Rawr XD” as Flirting
Image from Rolimon’s
Scene kids and emo teens had their own language, and nothing was more iconic (or embarrassing) than claiming “rawr XD” to show affection. “Rawr” was allegedly “I love you” in dinosaur language, and throwing in “XD” (a squinty laughing emoji) made it even more absurd. Now, the phrase is largely a joke people mention when talking about their cringiest internet phases.
12. Keyboard Smashing as a Reaction (Like “asdhjkl;”)
Image from Tenor
For some odd reason, everyone in the 2000s believed randomly pounding on their keyboard was the be-all and end-all of emotional expression on the internet. Whether they were laughing, frustrated, or excited, a good ol’ “lskdjflskdjf” got the point across. It still creeps up now and then, but at the time, it was essentially an entire language of the internet.
13. Horribly Blinged-Out MySpace Photos
Image from Pinterest
Thanks to places like Blingee and early Photoshop testing, MySpace was filled with profile images smothered in sparkles, floating hearts, and gangster-style text. Nothing was “cool” quite like a photo heavily Photoshopped with “Thug Life” in Comic Sans. Looking back, it was all just a bad graphic design fever dream.
14. Fred and Other Squeaky-Voiced YouTubers
Image from Wikitubia - Fandom
Before YouTube had refined content producers, there was Fred, a character portrayed by Lucas Cruikshank, who talked abnormally high-pitched. His ridiculously over-the-top, chaotic videos somehow were the most subscribed material on YouTube. Although Fred was fun at the time, it just feels like an auditory attack on your brain to watch it now.
15. The Overuse of “Fail” and “Epic Fail”
Image from Facebook
In the 2000s, it was all either a “fail” or an “epic fail,” whether it was a poor test grade or falling on your face in public. The term became so ubiquitous that it meant nothing at all, and before long, it only made people groan. Fortunately, this trend went out of style, and more inventive insults had to be used for awkward moments.
16. Screaming “LEEEEEEROY JENKINS!”
Image from Wikipedia
This internet meme has its roots in a World of Warcraft video with a player known as Leroy Jenkins, who disrupted his team’s plan and pushed ahead into a fight, killing all the players. The term picked up momentum as people blurted out at random instances in entirely distinct situations. Even gamers still call upon it sporadically now, but letting out a primal yell in a public place like that today would likely earn you strange glances.
17. The Numa Numa Dance
Image from Wikipedia
A man lip-syncing to the Romanian hit Dragostea Din Tei and flailing his arms was mid-2000s internet comedy at its finest. The Numa Numa video went ridiculously viral, with parodies and remixes galore. Although the original video remains nostalgic, the notion that we thought it was so funny is somewhat cringeworthy now.
18. “Shoes” and Other Random Early YouTube Sketches
Image from Heroes Wiki - Fandom
Comics such as Shoes (“OMG, shoes.”), The End of the World (“But I am le tired.”), and Charlie the Unicorn were the height of silly early YouTube comedy. These strange, low-res animations were parodied ad infinitum in Internet forums and school corridors. Even today, they retain a retro cachet, but the jokes are cringingly dated in the modern meme context.