#i went on neopets a few days back and i was shocked at how modern it looked

[bf-rally]

okay finally colored this!

idk what the sites color theme will be, so the colors will most definitely change but for now we have a logo (ft. my oc A)

[prettyoddfever]

I have a few different questions in my inbox that revolve around my perspective on being a teen in the 2000s. A few points weren’t relevant for me, but I’ll try to cover some other aspects here in one rambling post since this might be faster...

TECHNOLOGY:

There were no apps, filters, or presets back then. If you wanted to edit a picture, you had to sit down & actually learn how to use photoshop (I think some kids with Microsoft computers used Paint too but idk). Knowing how to use photoshop gave you a huge advantage on myspace and most likely made you popular in online forums because you could actually make icons, wallpapers, & stuff like neopets userlookup profile banners. The kinds of things that kids can do to pictures today with a single tap of a button used to take like an hour + a lot of talent. Also, photoshop didn’t used to have the kind of recurring payment nonsense that Adobe does now. You’d just go to a store, buy the software cd, install it, and then it was on your computer for good.

Selfies weren’t really a big thing until myspace... and a lot of people called them “myspace pictures” for a while if you turned the camera to face yourself lol. Gifs also didn’t have a name... I just called them “animations" at first.

Modern cell phones can replace so much stuff that I used to have to haul around... like my heavy Nokia phone, disposable camera, giant chunky video camera + its gear, a giant binder of cds plus my cd player & headphones, a notepad with pens, and maps I printed out from the internet. My friends would also bring their GPS, a portable dvd player for longer trips, and ipods... except we didn’t have a way to get the ipod to play in a car yet (in 2008-ish I got one of those cords that you could set to the frequency of whichever radio station was pure static and then you’d get to hear part of your song... but you’d have to keep changing the radio station on the cord as you drove because pretty soon another song would start to cut into yours).

I didn’t even get the type of cell phone that could have internet or apps until like 2013. I was def late to that party, but my point is that the few kids who had sidekicks in 2006 weren’t the norm. I had a basic flip phone, but don’t remember texting much until 2007. Most of my friends and I just used our phones to call our parents, and then talked on MSN or AIM on our computers (if you were fortunate enough to have one in the first place... a ton of kids at my school didn’t have internet at home).

I know that videos on youtube from 2006 look like they're "filmed on a potato" and really bad quality or whatever, but part of that low quality wasn't the fault of our video cameras!! It was really distressing how I could have a relatively decent video, try my best to get all the settings right to export it for webstreaming, and then it would look like a garbled mess by the time it finished uploading through whatever hell portal it went through while getting online. Sometimes the process of sharing & downloading video files also lowered the quality. So the quality of the original videos we recorded wasn’t quite as horrid as the final uploaded versions (cell phone videos do not apply to this... those were just atrocious period).

Our tvs were not super blurry & pixelated like the bad quality youtube videos you might see of recordings from 2006 lol. Have you ever seen a movie from 2002? It’s fine. I do remember tvs suddenly becoming REALLY clear towards the end of college, though... maybe around 2010? I don’t remember exactly when. I only remember spending a few months continually pointing out how clear the details were onscreen and being shocked that we could literally see someone’s pores. So I suppose there was some minor improvement, sure.

My random opinion: there was something nice about having fewer choices in entertainment and needing to wait to access something (I’m not saying that having the freedom to do your own thing on your own schedule these days is bad or anything... it’s just different). My high school friends and I had like 5 tv channels to pick from so then everyone watched the same exact shows at the same time because we didn’t know when the next rerun would be (although weekly TV guides that got delivered in the newspaper would list the names of each episode coming up on the schedule and I would highlight the ones I wanted to see). Some kids with cable would leave the tv on for hours in the hope that they’d see their favorite music videos show up. Now people can instantly access an endless range of entertainment on their own time, so some of the excitement that came from anticipation is lost (like even waiting for someone to return the movie you wanted to rent felt like a bigger deal than just clicking on whatever’s next in your Netflix list). I spent a lot of hours of my life waiting in fun lines for midnight Harry Potter book releases, but now I suppose you could just download an e-book right when it’s released. 

There weren’t verified social media accounts back then. YFly’s main selling point was the fact that celebrities were verified (that site didn’t really take off, but Brendon still had to sign up for an account in fall 2006). Without verified social media accounts, it was often really hard to tell if someone was real. There were SO many fake accounts for any & every celebrity. I legit believed that one account on Neopets was Emma Watson simply because so many other people were convinced too. There were a lot of fake myspace & facebook accounts for Ryan Ross & Brendon Urie by late 2006, but those always seemed very obviously fake to me (even if they actually managed to spell Brendon’s name right lol). Some newer fans who didn’t know as much about the guys were definitely fooled, though, so that’s yet another place where some harmful and/or inaccurate info came from.

FASHION:

movies from the 2000s aren’t a totally accurate picture of what teens dressed like… it’s more like an adult costume designer’s interpretation. 

Most kids I knew in high school just wore a lot of American Eagle, Hollister, Abercrombie, and whatever PacSun sold (like Roxy). There weren’t so many aesthetics back then. The high schools that my friends and I were familiar with (in several different states) mostly had kids who were skater, scene, emo, goth, kind of punk, the generalized preppy look that made everyone into a Laguna Beach clone, or kids who didn’t care & just wore sneakers, flared jeans, and whatever graphic unisex tshirts came with their school activities. 

Emo & scene were not the same thing. A lot of scene kids would get really upset if you called them emo. Some emo kids would be offended if you thought they’d ever be scene. Also: in my experience, emo kids were bullied waaaay more than scene kids.

I spent a lot of time at malls and was really into teen fashion magazines in high school like Teen Vogue, YM, Seventeen, Cosmogirl, Teen People, Elle Girl, etc. I just want to point out that styles changed SO much while I was in middle school & high school (2000–2007) and even more when I was in college. The popcorn shirts that I was obsessed with in 7th grade were only around for a short time. Flared sleeves were in towards the start of the decade, but that didn’t last long either. The 1960s came back briefly when I was in middle school, and then the neon 80s had a short comeback a few years later (but now I’m understanding why our teachers grumbled about how we were generalizing an entire decade with the looks of one moment lol). I can’t think of a single style that could possibly represent the whole decade of the 2000s. In 2004 I desperately wanted the flared jeans that Amanda Bynes wore in What A Girl Wants, but I wouldn’t have been caught dead in them in 2008. In 6th grade my favorite outfits were track pants that could snap off, flared jeans with flowers embroidered on them, butterfly clips in my hair, those clunky chunky brown sandals that looked like turtles, the spaghetti strap tank tops that were banned at school, a little triangle bandana thing on my head, foundation as some weird form of lipgloss, and body glitter. I fit in at that point, but I would’ve looked weird by 2002. Trends were super temporary & changed quickly. It’s not like the entire decade was into camo cargo pants, trucker hats, shirts/purses/hats/anything with your initial in rhinestones, madras shorts, platform sandals, jeans that laced up the sides, pants with flares as big as you could possibly get, colored skinny jeans, denim miniskirts with cropped leggings underneath, long camisoles with a lace bottom for layering, boleros, gauchos, striped polo & rugby shirts, that one style of adidas shoes, those velvet tracksuits, massively furry uggs, crocheted purses & shirts, jeans that looked like they were patched together, suede belts with the fringe that hung down to your knee, studded belts, etnies & vans, etc. Those things were from a range of different years. 2008/09 feels like it had way more in common with 2011 than with 2005. I thought the early 2000s had more in common with the late 90s than with 2006. I’m just saying... you can’t generalize the whole decade as a continuous look or sound.

TOXIC ASPECTS OF 2000s FASHION / TEEN CULTURE:

TW: eating disorders

Maybe movies didn’t show the actual types of tshirts that teens wore because those had a giant brand name plastered on them or were inappropriate? There was SO much sexual innuendo on shirts around like 2004. I just tried to google this and I’m shocked at how there are so few examples (I put some in this tag). I mean, it’s awesome that our culture has changed enough to recognize that those should be buried, but they were also so prevalent that it feels strange to see those shirts are just gone as though they barely existed. I’m able to find some examples of Abercrombie shirts still because the brand is popular, but those types of graphic tees were at almost every store in the mall for a season… even Kohls & Target were questionable. For a short time it was such a chore to find a tshirt that didn’t subtly say something sexual, which legit made me anxious as a high school freshman. A 14-year-old girl shouldn’t be walking around in a tshirt with colorful smiling flowers that say “guaranteed to get you up in seconds!” I hate that I was so naive that I wore that shirt to school for a long time, but I also hate that those types of shirts were created for the junior’s section of some stores. The graphics on those shirts were mostly designed to look like ads for things like tropical islands, travel, Asian restaurants, cleaning products, mountain resorts, etc… except it was usually sexual in some way if you stopped to actually read the small text. Other shirts were also surprisingly racist, sexist, and just generally weird for something that was obviously created for underage girls to wear. 

Parts of the teen fashion industry basically fostered a bitchy culture where girls hated each other and were striving for male validation. Most stores at the mall (and even Walmart & Target) had those popular attitude tees that pitted girls against each other or reduced our worth to a few physical characteristics. The Abercrombie t-shirt that said “I make you look fat” stands out in my memory (but it’s just one drop in the bucket of all the similar tees they sold). And there were SO many shirts at various stores about blondes vs brunettes that I remember wondering whether my friends who dyed their hair felt like they were switching sides in a battle lol (there weren’t many shirts about redheads, but I remember seeing one at a store like JC Penny or Sears that had some kind of flames & implied something sexual because of course).

There was even a weird trend of graphic tees that made fun of rural populations... like Urban Outfitters had so many shirts mocking states that were stereotypically redneck. Abercrombie and other stores did too. 

I still remember a teen magazine (maybe Cosmogirl?) had an article whose condescending tone was basically congratulating Rachel Bilson in The OC for eating cheeseburgers, being ok with her body/weight, and not trying to be skinny (she was probably a size 6 btw). She was legit considered “large” by several magazines back then, whereas Marissa on The OC was the standard of what was supposed to be “normal.” The media would create a culture where you needed to be super skinny to be acceptable, but then they’d blast those same celebrities for possibly being anorexic (and that shaming wasn’t done out of concern for their health… the tone was more like celebrating that a celebrity screwed up yet again). There really was no way to win.

I recently saw a current teen talking about that Senior Year movie on Netflix and how ridiculous it was that the main cheerleader girl claimed to be on an ice cube diet (as though that idea was absurd and Netflix was inventing it as a joke). That was an actual thing, though. I even remember reading the “helpful tip” in more than 1 magazine that the act of chewing on ice cubes would trick your brain/body into feeling a bit more full. I remember a couple girls who’d have cups of ice at lunch complaining about how their dentists told them that chewing on ice cubes was bad for their teeth. 

The top & middle shelves of jeans at Hollister & Abercrombie were like sizes 00-5 and then the biggest sizes were at the bottom. You had to kneel on the floor to try to find a size 9 in their limited stock, which was the biggest size some stores sold (others went up to a size 11). Way too many of my friends viewed themselves as “disgustingly obese cows” for being a size 9/10. I was legit ashamed to be a size 5/6. Our world was created through a really narrow lens of magazines & tv & movies, and we mostly saw super skinny white girls. 

Another aspect of the one-way dictation of culture was how “poor people” were very much looked down on in the early 2000s. The kiosks at the malls near me were full of counterfeit designer bags, sunglasses, shoes, etc. I’m mostly speaking for the preppy crowd here, but at a lot of high schools you were basically expected to have a small Coach bag and one of those chunky chain Tiffany & Co necklaces with the heart on it. That was just like the bare minimum (and it was embarrassing for the girls who were called out for clearly having knockoff ones… like I felt safer just not having those things than being caught looking like I wanted to, while clearly not being able to afford it). I was watching this youtube video last night (which is seriously funny btw) and the guy points out how Kate calls out Lizzie for being an outfit-repeater and then the characters in that movie look down on blue collar workers and people who might live in a trailer park. That is such a solid example of what our culture felt like back then. I’m glad that those comments seem noteworthy or abnormal now, but it’s hardly like the Disney channel invented that mindset. It was just everywhere. Like I cleaned hotel rooms throughout high school to be able to afford my clothes from American Eagle & Hollister, but that was a serious source of shame (even my mom looked down on me for that job). Sometime around 2009-2011 I started to notice a shift where it started to be more acceptable to admit that you shopped at Target or used coupons, and then shopping at thrift stores became mainstream cool and people were openly talking about their budgets, financial problems, etc. Maybe this shift was partially because of the recession in like 2008, but I really do think that a more connected society via the internet weakened the media’s ability to dictate such a narrow culture as we started to get inspiration & ideas from a wide range of perspectives. 

You know how in the movie 21 Jump Street there’s that scene where Channing Tatum & Jonah Hill go back to high school in like 2012 and it’s totally different? That was one of the most relatable scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie lol. Suddenly it was cool for teens to care about things or actually try in school? Admitting that you like Lord of the Rings or anything “nerdy” was no longer an actual risk that might make you lose friends or expose you to ridicule? Wtf I felt so ripped off. You’re not asking to be bullied if you wear your backpack on both shoulders?! I had been willing to give myself back problems because I thought that was the price of survival. I spent a lot of the early 2010s being cranky that the teen culture I had worked so hard to conform myself to was vanishing and being replaced with something that I would have absolutely loved in the first place, thanks. 

(I’m definitely not saying that everyone who went to high school in the early or mid-2000s had the same experience I did btw. This is just my perspective). 

SOME PAGES FROM TEEN MAGAZINES

Teen magazines were full of “entertainment” in the form of attacking female celebrities. That mindset definitely wasn’t limited to just teen magazines or the audience of teen girls, but I’m more shocked in hindsight by how 12-year-old girls were basically taught to judge, sabotage, and compete against each other. It seemed normal at the time, too. It fostered a culture where a lot of us were super insecure & anxious that everyone was waiting to laugh at our smallest mistake or mock our flaws. Here are some random examples of the culture we were fed in the mid-2000s.