Consider this your official nostalgia checklist. If you tick more than half, you’re legally obligated to shout “AS IF!” in a Cher Horowitz voice and put on your favourite boyband CD. Ready? Let’s go…
- Your first mobile was a Nokia brick and you played Snake like it was an Olympic sport. Bonus points if you had a sparkly clip-on aerial.
- Portable CD player = personality and you learned to walk like a stealth ninja so it wouldn’t skip.
- MSN Messenger ruled your evenings — BRB culture, nudge wars, dramatic screen names with ✨symbols✨, and logging in/out to get your crush’s attention.
- You survived dial-up and still hear that modem screech in your dreams. Also: someone picking up the landline could end your entire session.
- Piczo or MySpace made you a “web designer” — glitter text, autoplay music, guestbooks, and 400px-wide photos that took nine years to load.
- Bebo “luv” politics and choosing an “other half” caused at least one friendship wobble.
- Saturday mornings were sacred — SMTV Live, Live & Kicking, Diggit, or TOTP Saturday with cereal in hand.
- You collected magazines for the freebies — Sabrina’s Secrets diaries, S Club Style accessories, tatt stickers, gel pens… the haul was the point.
- School discos were chaos — Cha Cha Slide on loop, one rogue Bob the Builder, and a slow dance that lasted 27 seconds of pure panic.
- You printed song lyrics and kept them in a plastic wallet like sacred texts for bus-stop singalongs.
- Ringtones were a personality — polyphonic bops, Crazy Frog menace, Jamster subscriptions that nobody read the small print for.
- You learned “tech” via infrared/Bluetooth — phones kissing to send one blurry JPEG called image(2).jpg.
- Neopets/Habbo/Club Penguin era — feeding digital pets, trading furni, getting booted for typing “bad” words like pizza party.
- Top 8 etiquette was real — remove someone and brace for fallout. Add someone and it’s basically a relationship announcement.
- You knew Woolworths like a second home — Pick ’n’ Mix, CD singles, and a last-minute school project emergency shop.
- You decorated everything with stickers — phones, pencil cases, bedroom doors (sorry, landlords of the future).
- You remember “The Dome” before it was The O2 — and you will die on that hill.
- Your TV memories are sponsored by questionable ads — “Crazy Frog”, “Funky Pigeon”, and ringtone screens with 6pt T&Cs.
- You burned mix CDs with hand-drawn tracklists and very serious vibes (bonus: Windows Media Player visualiser trance).
- Finally, you still say “I’ll be five minutes” meaning “I’m finishing this MSN convo, changing my status twice, and printing some lyrics.”
Daisy says… “If your Piczo had glitter text AND autoplay Cascada, you basically invented UX. Babes, you’re a pioneer.”
How many did you tick off? Drop your score — and your most chaotic MSN screen name — in the comments. Bonus points for a photo of your Nokia (with the original case, obviously). 💿📟✨
Asten Does Nostalgia 
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