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I call it the dumb internet. The wild west. Back when the web felt like it actually belonged to us. Salad Fingers. Badger Badger Mushroom. The Llama Song. Getting Rick Rolled. Miniclip games. Myspace profiles coded in messy HTML with songs embedded and VampireFreaks friendships in chatrooms. RuneScape grinding away in the background. LimeWire crashing the family computer. Dial-up tones screaming through the house, blocking the phone line. It was chaotic, weird and beautiful.

But most of all it was rogue, gloriously rogue. There was a place for everyone. You could be soft and bubbly, raising Neopets or playing endless Flash games or you could stumble across the darkest, weirdest corners of animation and shock humour. Happy Tree Friends with its blood-soaked cartoons disguised as cute. Charlie the Unicorn dragging us through candy mountain. And David Firth with Salad Fingers and Fat-Pie, years ahead of his time, shaping a generation with content that was surreal, disturbing and unforgettable.

For me, the dumb internet was more than entertainment. It was an escape. I was 11 when I found RuneScape via Miniclip and it cracked my world open. I’d been raised in a homeschool Christian cult (ACE), where everything was tightly controlled. RuneScape was freedom. A place where I could meet strangers, explore, make choices and live a life beyond the one I was trapped in. I still play Old School RuneScape today, because it’s more than nostalgia - it’s part of who I am.

And then there was LimeWire. Downloading “Evanescence / Linkin Park / Limp Bizkit” tracks that were probably mislabeled, definitely viruses and absolutely worth it. I wrecked our computer more than once, waiting hours for songs that might not even play. But that was the price of building your own soundtrack.

Back then, the internet felt untouchable, like it belonged to us and no one was watching. There were no rules, no filters, no endless feeds trying to predict what we’d click - just pure chaos and discovery. You’d type something random into a search bar and end up in a whole new world... from glittery MySpace pages to forums that felt like secret clubs. It was reckless in the best way. Half the time you didn’t even know what you were going to stumble into. And that unpredictability, that freedom, is something the internet will never give us again.

It wasn’t just online either. Life was patched together with hacks and rituals. Jog-proof Walkmans from Argos. Tiny gummy radios. VHS tapes filled with MTV recordings, hoping the DJ wouldn’t talk over your favourite track. Double tape decks, making mixtapes by hand. Queuing outside Woolworths for album releases - Sean Paul’s Temperature stamped into my memory forever. Phones that were yours: antennas, ringtones downloaded off MTV ads, removable cases, Motorola Razrs in gold or bubblegum pink. Even an AUX cable disguised as a cassette felt revolutionary.

And then there was Blockbuster. Not just a shop, but a ritual. Walking under the bright blue-and-yellow sign. The smell of plastic VHS and DVD cases. Wandering aisle after aisle, trying to choose between horror, comedy or whatever was left on the new release shelf. Hoping the last copy of the movie you came for wasn’t already gone. Grabbing popcorn or pick ’n’ mix on the way out. It wasn’t just about the film - it was about the whole experience of choosing it, holding it and making a night of it. I still think Blockbuster could make a comeback today. And honestly, they’d kill it.

The dumb internet was messy. It was dangerous. It was ridiculous. It was alive. And it gave people like me, whether we were emos, goths, skaters or outcasts - a place to exist. A wild frontier of bubblegum and darkness, viruses and art, where we figured out who we were becoming.

It was dumb. It was brilliant. And it was ours.