Happy birthday, World Wide Web. You turn 25 today.
And gosh, where would we be without you? Without you there would be no email, no Wikipedia, no Google maps and we would still be buying porno in the VHS form.
Oh, and we wouldn’t be here, either, since, ya know, we need you to exist.
So we thought we would do something special for you on your birthday.
First, here’s a cake:
(Another thing we couldn’t have without you, World Wide Web? GIFs).
Here’s a whole post dedicated to you. We went back ten years, for #WaybackWednesday, to remember what hanging out on the Web was like in 2004.
Check it out below.
Facebook started that year…
But, nah, you knew nothing about that. Myspace was the wave back then.
Actually, Myspace was JUST starting to pop off. If we’re really being real, it was all about this:
What’s your A/S/L?
What’s a Spotify? People were getting their music the strong-arm robbery way. Limewire was what everyone was using after Napster flamed out.
What’s a Google?
Yahoo! was still what you used when you had to search for shit. If not Yahoo! then maybe, MAYBE, AskJeeves.
As for email: “You got mail” was still a praise that was known in pop culture circles:
You needed to know about something? There was no Wikipedia. (Actually, it was around but people didn’t use it). Encyclopedia.com was still your best bet.
Remember how happy you were when, in 2004, you got rid of your Compaq…
And got yourself a Dell?
Those were the days.
PHOTO CREDIT: Getty
