Things That Annoyed Every ’00s Kid (That None of Us Have to Deal With Anymore)

Remember the early ‘00s when your only care in the world was whether Ryan and Marissa from “The O.C.” would get their happy ending? But not everything back then was worry-free.

Here’s a list of things that annoyed every ‘00s kid that most of us don’t have to deal with anymore…

When Your Netflix Wait Time Was a Nightmare

We sometimes forget Netflix started with a completely different business model. Back then, you used Netflix to rent DVDs through the mail. Like most technology, it improved your life and made it worse at the same time.

You put all your requests in a queue, but you could have only three at a time. And if a movie was popular, you had to wait a serious while before it arrived.

You never got the movie you really wanted to see.

When You Missed the Channel You Wanted to See

Before you could pull up a channel guide that you could navigate yourself at will, there was the TV Guide Channel, which featured a slowly crawling schedule that made you wait endlessly for the one channel you wanted to see.

Something distracted you at exactly the moment when your channel was onscreen? Too bad. Wait another four hours for it to come back around.

When the Ringtone Was Too Expensive

These days, ringtones are an afterthought. Most people who aren’t lunatics keep their phones on silent all the time anyway. And most who don’t stick to their phones default ringtone or at least the stock that came with the device.

But in the ’00s, picking a ringtone took forever not only because there were so many options but also because they cost money and you’d change yours, like, every other day.

When Internet Explorer Needed to Close

You were watching a funny “Weird Al” Yankovic video or playing a great Flash game. Then, all of a sudden, you got that annoying error message that said “Internet Explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close.” It almost made you want to burn your computer to the ground.

Almost.