Rejoice Millennials, it’s time to bring them back!
Ah the early 2000’s, hard back books were in and mobile phones still had all the buttons. The internet was just beginning to take off, chat rooms and forums were all the craze and YouTube wasn’t even a thing yet! MSN? AOL? MySpace? Now defunct, back then they felt like the cornerstone of adolescent and young adult society!
Being late to the millennial party I can’t claim to remember too much from this period of time, so when a Japanese video game I’m currently playing through (Robotics; Notes Elite, for those who are interested!) began to make reference to internet slang from the early 2000’s I just had to take a closer look!
I ended up taking a deep-dive into the historic internet (so you don’t have to!) and discovered phrases that ranged from the incredibly cool to ones that induced a full-body cringe.
Terrifying and wonderful in equal measure, wow your mates with these 5 references from the turn of the century and reignite the nostalgic flames of a special point in time.
“Gevanni did it in a night”
The reference from the video game I’m playing which kicked this whole thing off, this is so cool. People who get the reference will give you a massive thumbs up and those who don’t will want to pretend that they do!
The reference comes from the popular anime series “Death Note” where one of the Detectives trying to crack the case, called Gevanni, pulls off the Mission-Impossible-level stunt of forging an entire book in one night.
The phrase then became adopted by the internet to show respect and admiration to someone who’s done a quality piece of work in a short amount of time.
So next time you pay a complement to a great lastminute.com piece of work, why not try telling them ‘Gevanni did it in a night’? They might just know what you mean!
Pirates
From sailing the Ivory Coast in the 17th century in search of Spanish merchant vessels to pillage, the career path of a Pirate took a mysterious turn at the beginning of the 21st century.
As the traditional music and film industry clashed head-on with the newly minted data sharing capabilities of the internet, the demand for instant DVD and music files outstripped the industry’s capacity to keep up.
Stepping into the breach were the ‘Pirates’, the smugglers of the digital age bootlegging CD’s and DVD’s over the internet and making them accessible for free… or for a small fee, argh!
This was a really big deal at the time and led to dramatic adverts like this one being played before the screenings of films in cinemas!
It would be at least another 15 years before streaming became a thing and once again, plunged our poor plundering pirates back into the murky depths of obscurity.
So spare a thought for the Pirates of years before and next time you call someone out for copying another person’s idea online, consider tossing them a bone and calling them a ‘Pirate’ instead!
Dubdubdub
This one is awful, just one of the worst. So awful in fact, we should definitely bring it back!
For those of you born after the year 2000, the “www.” stands for “World Wide Web”.
Read ‘www’ out loud, then read ‘dubdubdub’ back. Notice anything?
I’m just going to roll over to the dubdubdub to continue my deep diving for more nuggets of early 2000s linguistic gold!
PWND
It has no vowels, but you didn’t need the vowels to read that in your head and know immediately how it sounds, right?
Apparently originating from the chess move “Pawn to Knight” to describe a pawn taking an opponent’s knight, a very favourable exchange, it first rose to prominence in its usage on the internet as online gaming really took off.
A brag, a cry of victory, it was exclaimed when one “PWND” another player in a game.
Try shouting that at work next time you have a win! Let me know how that goes, will ya?
Woot
Whilst still immensely popular today, can you get more 90’s than “Dungeons and Dragons”?
Woot is one of those funny words that was imported into the internet rather than having found its meaning there by itself.
It’s a portmanteau of the phrase “Woo! Loot!” that DnD players huddled around a reusable camping lantern in their garden shed would cry out as their Dungeon Master announces the discovery of a treasure chest. The word represents joy, excitement, the discovery of something new!
My Partner cooked dinner the other day and I declared “Woot!”… she wasn’t impressed. I hope you have better luck resurrecting this one than I’ve had so far!
I had to dive pretty deep into the internet to fish some of those out for you- so don’t let that effort all go to waste now! From your Giovanni’s to your dubbing and wooting- long live the early 2000’s!
Painting a Thousand Words 