Once upon a time, the internet wasn’t an all-knowing, all-seeing machine trying to sell you skincare based on a conversation you had five minutes ago. It was a glorious mess; a sprawling digital playground where you could carve out your own little space and stumble upon hidden corners filled with people just as weird as you. There were no influencers, no engagement metrics, no algorithmic gods deciding what you saw and when. You found things by chance and by curiosity; by clicking on the wrong link and somehow ending up on a forum dedicated to medieval sword replicas (and staying there for hours).

The early internet wasn’t tailored to you; you tailored yourself to it. You navigated its imperfections, filled in its blanks, and in doing so, made it your own. There were no aesthetics and no pristine online personas riddled with self-inflicted cringe; it was the perfect teenage wasteland. As a way to map our evolving relationship with internet, we spoke to people who witnessed this era and drove down the proverbial memory lane of early internet culture.

The 'social' part of social media was a different animal back then. For many new users it was just a communication tool. Faisal's first vivid memory of being online was talking to his dad and relatives abroad via Yahoo Messenger. Shreyas met friends in forums dedicated to games, TV shows, or bands and some of those friendships lasted for years. Shivangi found her first boyfriend through Facebook mutual friends. All of the people we spoke to were teens during the early years of the internet. It was the first time all of us had a medium to talk to total strangers in this capacity and in our developing years, it meant a great deal.

Vaibhav raised a great point that becomes relevant here as well. It doesn't take more than two seconds to open a Instagram notification today but going 'online', as we called it, involved a much lengthier process back then. Raunak remembers sitting at his clunky desktop computer, waiting forever for the dial-up modem to connect. "That screeching noise felt like a magic gateway opening to this new digital world," he muses. Saurabh recalls, "Going online was an accompaniment of weird sci-fi alien noises from my computer, disconnection whenever the household phone receives a call, and 20 minutes to download an mp3."

The internet felt farther away then, the road to which involved multiple buttons and a fairly technical procedure. There was an electric sense of stepping into something and somewhere bigger than yourself; a place where people from different parts of the world were suddenly within reach. So when you finally managed to get online, it felt special. To top it off, you only had a limited amount of time to access this space, so some saved it for downloading music, others for wallpapers, and some for limited browsing. I made plans with friends to come online at a specific time to chat which was also for a couple of hours at best before we logged off. In this way, the boundaries between the physical and digital worlds were much more defined.

80% of the people we interviewed used Yahoo Messenger. Its chat rooms were widely popular and I think the origin of group chat culture lies somewhere in that point of time. While most of it was harmless fun, I do remember going into creepy Omegle-like territories where horned up teens tried to sext as best as they could. We introduced ourselves with ASL — age, sex & location and indulged in leading questions about each other that felt a little illicit.

Faisal remembers Orkut bios and having your own profile song on Hi5 as a popular trend that defined that era. For Raunak, it was the embedded music on MySpace pages. "Picking the right song was a major personality statement. Whether it was an emo banger from Fall Out Boy, a pop hit, or something obscure to flex your 'coolness'. It was like saying, 'This is me in audio form'," he shares. Swati remembers the photo filters and Raman recalls checking out Tumblr posts of his favourite music artists at the time, putting a status on BBM chat, and testimonials on Orkut which were always embellished with praises. This campy and might I say, even slightly punk manner of creating edgy online personas defined the collective consciousness of that time.

The concept of crafting a digital personality came with the internet but it mattered way less in our totally separate real lives then. Today these two worlds are deeply entwined; like a mariage where the couple now know too much about each other and it sometimes gets in the way of a healthy relationship. Raunak shares, "Looking back, social media used to feel like this fun, low-stakes playground. You’d hop on after school, post blurry photos, share random thoughts, and chat with friends without overthinking it. It wasn’t about algorithms or 'brand building'; it was just about connecting. Now, it feels like it has become inescapable, woven into almost every part of life. It’s central to how we socialize, stay informed, and even work. There’s a pressure to be 'always on' whether that’s keeping up with trends, maintaining a digital presence for your career, or just catching up with your social circles. It’s no longer just fun — it’s work, both emotionally and mentally. The constant scroll; the comparison; the algorithms designed to keep us hooked — it’s exhausting sometimes."

There is a paradox here that needs to be acknowledged at this point. And that is media literacy. By having spent over two decades with the internet being a part of our social fabric, we've come to learn its ways. Back then, our involvement with it was limited but we trusted it blindly and maybe even put it on a pedestal at times. Shivangi explains, "The past is in the past and I am grateful to have grown out of it. My relationship with social media has evolved, as it has for most of us, over time. Today, I am more mindful of what I put out there and it’s no longer a frenzy of wanting to etch my mark on the World Wide Web with whimsical status updates and photos to show people I have friends. While I still do of course get steered off course by the urge to 'be seen', it no longer weighs too heavily on my conscience as it did back in the day. Teenager me would’ve have probably looked up to the now “me” and she was an integral part of my growth and for who I am today."

I think she's also speaking to the fact that we've grown comfortable with the internet and with that there is a new level of transparency we've achieved. I'm not denying that a huge part of it is still polished aesthetics to make your life look better than it really is. But there's also the cringe that we've gotten over. I, for instance cannot imagine speaking my mind and sharing unpopular opinions in my early internet era. That girl couldn't afford to be not liked. To the credit of a lot of sensible creators today, there is a space, albeit small, on the internet to be weird without being shamed for it. The fabricated realities still exist but atleast now, we also have people that call this out.

There is some semblance of authenticity now. In India, especially, content that once was humiliated for being 'cheap' or 'uncultured' just because it came from the lower strata of society, now has the most views. This is also true for creators from other developing nations that tell the true story of how the marginalized actually live, even if it's through mini-vlogs. We used to be (and often still are) called out for our 'unhygienic' street food in the West. Yet, every time a white creator is running low on views, they do an India tour for the popularity it provides. Homogeneity has become boring. We want to see life in remote Russia, bucolic animal farms and Indian/ South African villages with DIY gyms.

But there's a catch when it comes to what you want to see. Just a decade ago, digital media companies had to work hard to get our data before. We were warned to be vigilant about sharing information through emails or new websites. But all of that became obsolete when dopamine-targeting algorithms became prevalent. Now our interactions with the content we consume gets fed into this ever-learning, ever-perfecting system that finds ways to keep us interested for as long as it can so it can sell us things. This is as Black Mirror-esque as it gets but you might not notice it because it's disguised in the form cat videos, silly dances, and by the alluring landscape of new trending memes.

As horrifiyng as this situtation sounds in terms of basic privacy, having an awareness of this machine is at least a stepping stone in the direction of more mindful consumption. The question now becomes one of balance. Faisal believes that this is impossible because of how good the algorithms have gotten at holding our attention. "The instinct to open your app drawer and go on social media is almost like muscle memory or instinct, a lot of people do it subconsciously," he points out.

Raunak, on the the other hand thinks that balance is possible, but it requires intentional effort — both individually and as a society. "On a personal level, it means setting boundaries, like limiting screen time, muting accounts that drain you, or carving out tech-free zones in your day," he explains. "On a larger scale, it means rethinking the systems that make social media so addictive and exploitative. Maybe platforms need to be redesigned to prioritise well-being over engagement. It’s tricky because social media isn’t going away, but it doesn’t have to control us either. Maybe the key is remembering why we loved it in the first place — using it to connect, create, and share joy, while being okay with stepping away when we need to."

Throughout civilization, humans have looked back at history to gain perspective. Lessons from matters and events in the past have acted like a compass for us; nudging us in the right direction. Digital nostalgia then is another source from which we can begin to constuct a new outlook for the future. I've said this before but attention is a currency and social media platforms are spaces that bank on it to keep the wheels of capitalism running. It's a monster too big to defeat. But a little agency goes a long way. We can't fully go back to the old days but maybe we can reclaim a little bit of that spirit. We can choose to 'visit' for a while instead of perpetually living there.

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