Things People Used To Be Obsessed With
Internet culture moves fast, but every era had its rituals. Some were silly, some genuinely useful, and many quietly disappeared.
1. Homepage hit counters
Watching visitor numbers climb felt like social proof and personal validation.
2. Custom ringtone websites
People spent hours curating phone sounds like personal branding.
3. Desktop weather widgets
Floating mini dashboards on every screen during the widget boom.
4. Personality quizzes
Thousands of results pages promised identity in ten questions.
5. Browser toolbars
Stacked search bars and helper buttons before clean browser UIs took over.
6. Forum signatures
Animated banners and quote blocks were a status system of their own.
7. Chain emails
Social virality before social media was polished or centralized.
8. Download counts
Software pages lived and died by visible counters and comments.
9. Viral flash games
Short loops that spread through school labs and office downtime.
10. Winamp skins
People customized music players like bedroom walls.
Most online obsessions fade. The formats that survive usually solve a real, repeatable need.