38 born · 21 peaked · 1 died
Born in 1999 38
- ●404 (Slang)'Not found', applied to a person — 'he's 404', 'brain 404' — as the error code that becam…
- ●Ad BlockerSoftware that stops advertisements loading in a browser. Ad Muncher, from 1999, is among …
- ↺Age of Empires IIMedieval real-time strategy with thirteen civilisations, a priest who says 'wololo', and …
- ●AggroA monster's attention — aggro — and 'pulling aggro' as drawing it, from MMOs into life: '…
- ●BikesheddingArguing at length about something trivial because it is the only part everyone understand…
- ▲BlackBerryThe email-first phone with the physical keyboard, born as a two-way pager in 1999, that r…
- ☠BlogosphereThe idea that independent sites linking to each other formed a single conversation. Died …
- ●BuffAn improvement to a character's stats — a buff — and, as a verb, to make anything stronge…
- ●BumpPosting nothing in order to lift a thread. Still done on every forum that has a chronolog…
- ●Counter-StrikeTerrorists against counter-terrorists, one life per round, bought weapons and a bomb. A f…
- ◐EverQuestThe 3D MMORPG that came before World of Warcraft and was known to its players as EverCrac…
- ▲Everything2A hyperlinked encyclopedia of nodes written by users, two years before Wikipedia. Lost on…
- ●GankTo ambush a player, usually with numbers — to gank — from MMO player-killing into the MOB…
- ●Heroes of Might and Magic IIITurn-based fantasy strategy on a hand-painted map, with hot-seat multiplayer that needed …
- ●Kekeke (Korean Laugh)ㅋㅋㅋ — the Korean typed laugh, a row of the consonant 'k', born in PC-bang chat and Sta…
- ☠Kuro5hinCollaborative editing of stories before they were posted, and a community that took the q…
- ◐LiveJournalA diary with friends-only locks, mood icons and the current music field. Sold to a Russia…
- ☠MSN MessengerWhere the world outside America instant-messaged. Retired into Skype in 2013, which was r…
- ☠MahirA Turkish accordion player with a home page and the greeting 'I KISS YOU!!!!!'. The first…
- ◐MetaFilterFive dollars to join, one post a day, and the best comment section on the internet. Fadin…
- ☠NapsterEvery song on every hard drive in the world, indexed. Alive for twenty-five months and su…
- ↺NeopetsVirtual pets, a stock market, and a fandom that learned HTML to decorate its shop. Lost m…
- ▲Pokémon Gold and SilverThe sequel to the 1998 craze, with a hundred new creatures, a real-time clock that made e…
- ↺Pokémon SnapAn on-rails photography game on the Nintendo 64 in which the player takes pictures of Pok…
- ↺RSSSubscribing to a site directly, without an intermediary deciding what you see. Declared o…
- ↺RollerCoaster TycoonA theme-park builder written by one Scottish programmer in assembly language, in which ch…
- ●Rubber Duck DebuggingExplaining your code, line by line, to a rubber duck until you find the mistake yourself …
- ●STFU'Shut the f*** up' — the internet's oldest way of ending a discussion, from IRC to every …
- ●ScrubA bad player who blames the game — the scrub — from the fighting-game community, which bo…
- ▲Shock SiteA website existing only to show one unbearable image, linked to the unsuspecting as a pra…
- ◐Something AwfulA ten-dollar forum from which most of the 2000s internet was released. Its founder died i…
- ↺Tony Hawk's Pro SkaterTwo minutes per level, a combo counter and a soundtrack that taught a generation about sk…
- ☠Unreal TournamentThe arena shooter that shipped three weeks before Quake III Arena and split the deathmatc…
- ●WhiffTo miss an attack entirely — a swing that touches nothing — borrowed from baseball into f…
- ●Wipe (Raid)The death of an entire raid group to a boss, in EverQuest from 1999 and in World of Warcr…
- ☠XangaA blog with eProps, where every teenager wrote a diary in public and nobody's parents kne…
- ●Zombo.comA site where you can do anything, at Zombo.com, said aloud forever. Rebuilt in HTML5 when…
- ◐n00bA newcomer, spelt with contempt. Still typed by people who were newbies when it was coine…
Peaked in 1999 21
- ☠AOL KeywordA word you typed instead of a URL, printed at the bottom of every advert. Died when it be…
- ▲AngelfireGeoCities for people who had already been thrown off GeoCities. Technically still online,…
- ☠Best Viewed at 800x600A warning that the page had been designed for exactly one monitor. Responsive design did …
- ↺ClippyAn animated paperclip that interrupted you. Hated in life, beloved in death — the earlies…
- ☠Dial-up HandshakeThe shriek two modems made agreeing to talk. The only sound in this dictionary that every…
- ▲Dot-comA company whose product was its URL. Died in the spring of 2000 taking a sock puppet and …
- ☠FramesA page made of several pages in windows that scrolled independently, none of which could …
- ☠GeoCitiesThirty-eight million personal pages, deleted on a Monday. The largest single act of cultu…
- ☠GuestbookA page where strangers wrote that they had visited. The first comment section, and the la…
- ☠Hamster DanceRows of animated hamsters and a sped-up Roger Miller loop. Made to win a bet about traffi…
- ☠ICQThe first instant messenger, with numbers instead of names and the uh-oh. Lasted twenty-e…
- ▲ICQ Uh-OhThe sound of someone wanting you. The first push notification, and the last one anybody w…
- ☠MIDI Background MusicA tinny synthesised song that started when the page loaded and could not be stopped. The …
- ▲Metal Gear SolidA stealth game in which a boss reads your memory card, comments on your other games and m…
- ▲Pokémon Red and BlueCatch 151 creatures on a Game Boy, trade the rest through a link cable. The 1998 Western …
- ☠SixDegreesThe first social network, profile and friends list and all, seven years before anyone was…
- ●The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of TimeThe first 3D Zelda, with lock-on targeting, a horse and an ocarina played with the C butt…
- ◐Ultima OnlineThe first MMORPG to reach a hundred thousand subscribers, with a player-driven economy, h…
- ▲WarezPirated software, with a z. The scene, the couriers, the NFO files, the ASCII art; a whol…
- ◐WormsCartoon worms in trenches lobbing bazookas, exploding sheep and a holy hand grenade at ea…
- ◐Yahoo!The directory of websites two Stanford students started in February 1994, first under the…