Some broken souls are holed up in a subreddit, trying to replicate the internet as it was in 2009
The internet can seem like a lost cause in 2019. The state of things online being what they are, it’s easy to long for a digital refuge, a safe space evoking the internet of yesteryear. Enter: r/Stuck10YearsBehind, the subreddit where no one can tell you it isn’t still 2009.
The subreddit is precisely what it sounds like: a place where people can go to to post what they would have been posting 10 years ago to the day. In an interview with Mashable, creator Dylan Perkins said he came up with the concept “after going down a rabbit hole of old YouTube videos, memes, and forum posts from around 10 years ago and coming out of it feeling like I was in a different world.”
This isn’t the first time people online have yearned for the simpler pleasures of 2009, and with good reason. In 2009, sketch videos were rarer and, by virtue, funnier. In 2009, you could watch a video of a kid, drugged-up following a trip to the dentist, with very little concern of whether or not he was a virulent racist. And hey, remember Three Wolf Moon?
For some, r/Stuck10YearsBehind is a place where it feels to kick up your feet and ride out the storm, numb on the thrill of old memes and The Office. Others, however, will realize that just about every third post there is a Rick Roll. Forward progress has its charms, too.
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