1) Internet Explorer 6
You know you were a 2000s young adult if you used Microsoft Internet Explorer 6! Released to coincide with the launch of Microsoft Windows XP, IE 6 was the de facto standard browser for over 5 years! Featuring substantial improvements over IE 5.5 it implemented loads of new web standards in a kind of half-arsed way! IE 6 lingered on for most of the decade in corporate intranets and your dad’s house before collapsing in a pile of ActiveX plugins, outdated web standards support and filth.
2) Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
If you were a 2000s young adult, you’ll remember the anticipation leading up to the release of the final Star Wars prequel Revenge of the Sith! Remember how everyone was like “Yeah we said Attack of the Clones was good but we were wrong about that in retrospect but this is definitely good!” Also: Indiana Jones and maybe Superman Returns.
3) When Wispa bars disappeared and then came back
Cadbury’s popular Wispa bar was first launched in the 80s and was a delicious staple in the Dairy Milk-based catalogue until evil Cadbury-Schweppes (as it was then) CEO Colin McNasty withdrew it in early 2003. It returned in 2007 thanks to lots of people realising Aeros aren’t as good
4) Youthful Optimism
If you were a 2000s Young Adult you’ll remember the youthful optimism that you had before it was crushed out of you by the world of work and the realities of relationships! You’ll remember how friendships you made in your late teens seemed incredibly important but you’ve not seen any of them in over half a decade! You see your parents ageing and don’t know how to cope and it reminds you of your mortality! You’re constantly reminded how everyone slightly younger than you has it worse off than you and yet everything seems like a financial struggle and you’ll never own a house.
5) The Libertines
Their second album was actually awful. Seriously, it’s terrible.
6) When everyone slightly younger than you joined Facebook, but you couldn’t because you’d just graduated and it was only open to students and then you did join and then your Mum joined
7) This Google homepage
8) Buying 2 DVDs for £25 in Zavvi
Remember Zavvi? Imagine if someone bought all the Virgin Megastores and put green signs saying “Zavvi” on them instead! That’s what Zavvi was like to whole generation of 2000s young adults for the 2 or 3 years that it existed. You felt like you should be buying your music on iTunes and yet you still felt a teenage nostalgia for browsing racks of CDs, which you would then order off amazon (who weren’t evil then) instead.
What could be a bigger sign of both the financial crisis and the move to internet sales and cheap disposable media content than the collapse of Zavvi? Well maybe the collapse of Woolworths but they sold kids shoes and ironing boards too so whatever.
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