1. IMVU

I never used AIM, or MySpace. I wasn't allowed to have either. I wasn't allowed to have IMVU, of course, but it was easier to hide because my picture was just an avatar that had my skin, hair, and eye color. I would talk to random strangers but never give out my real name or age. I had a couple other friends from school who used it, and I'd talk to them sometimes, too. One of my closest 7th grade friendships ended over an IMVU fight. I obviously couldn't buy credits, but I'd do what I could to pick up free ones and buy cute clothes and hairstyles for my avatar when possible.

2. Roller Coaster Tycoon 3

We see posts about the original RCT all the time, but what about RCT3? You could do so much more with this. I even tried to make movies with it before I was "old enough" to play Sims.

Bonus points if you remember School Tycoon, Mall Tycoon (1-3, or Mall of America Tycoon), or Lemonade Tycoon- the less popular titles. And if you played any of them on Real Arcade, and kept your "60 minute" free trial going way past the 60 minutes it was supposed to be.

3. Target's Hollister Copycat Clothes

I couldn't fit into Hollister clothes because my body just refused to grow to the size of an average 12 year old, so I had to improvise. As it turned out, Target's children's section usually had some clothes that vaguely resembled the kinds of clothes one could find at Hollister/Abercrombie, for a much better price, too.

4. E-Mails

This is how I kept in touch with most of my friends, considering most of them didn't have IMVU. You had to have the perfect e-mail address, the perfect signature, oh, and you usually got at least 3 chain letters every day. Ever wonder why you have bad luck? How many people did you forward those e-mails to? I remember sending them to my ex-best-friends sometimes because I didn't have enough people to meet the minimum threshold of avoiding bad luck.

5. The Newbie Boards

We talk about Neopets a lot, but remember when we invented cringe culture? If you were cool, you had a "screenies" page on one of your pet's "webpages". Often, this included making fun of the "newbie" forum on NeoBoards. Although I suppose the commentary may have been just as cringe as the posts themselves.

6. Stride Gum

This was the best gum flavor, hands down. I didn't want to include too many food ones, so it was a toss-up between this and the "Peach Mango" flavor of Vitamin Water, or this one SoBe drink I used to have in 6th grade. I think the gum was a more universally-enjoyed thing, though.

7. The iHome

People talk about old iPods all the time, but you don't hear much about iHomes. If you were really cool, you had the one with the remote. Bonus points if it matched your iPod.

Other random iPod nostalgia: that little dock thing where you could have it stand up while it was plugged into your computer, but it served no other functional purpose. Also, you couldn't use the thing while it was syncing. The "music quiz" game was lit and they need an app for it now.

8. Tamagotchi

I used to wear mine on a carabiner clip on my jeans. My friends and I would play at lunch and sync with each other, one girl had a knockoff "Littlest Pet Shop" version, our biggest fear was it accidentally becoming unpaused or unmuted in class (meaning either it'd die on us or we'd get caught having it). My biggest victory was pulling off that I named mine "Nacho" instead of my crush's name. I'm kidding, everyone knew. My real biggest victory was beating my high score on "bump" under my desk in the toughest, strictest teacher's class.

Mine was the pink one with cherries on it. My parents got me a V3 right around the time V4 was released. I also got my iPod nano (2nd gen) around the time the 3rd gen was released.

9. The Sims 2 Exchange

For some reason, EA decided to delete The Sims 2 website in early 2013. In late 2012, we stopped being able to log into the Exchange and get access to most of the site. However, for those who loved Sims, this place was lit. All the best obscure custom content could be found here, and some of the best stories were shared by those who weren't into movie-making (hint at what next week's post is going to be about). I'm still bitter they took this away from us.

10. Charlie the Unicorn Edits

I was a big fan of the "Charlie the Unicorn" trilogy in middle school. I watched almost every video FilmCow put out, and some might think they were weird, creepy videos. That might be true, but one thing's for sure: the edits were worse. Most of the worst ones were long since deleted, thus, this was the best example I could find.