Why the 2000s seem like ancient history

And old high school videos keep going viral.

Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.

Some high school footage for you, from before it was cool. —Kate

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Earlier this week, the Twitter account “non aesthetic things” posted a video with the caption “High school in 2002 looked so chill.”

non aesthetic things @PicturesFoIder

High school in 2002 looked so chill

The video is a montage of clips taken on a blurry camcorder, featuring various students from the Y2K past wearing appropriately dated and unflattering clothing. Nothing special happens in the video, just a lot of waving and face-pulling. But it captivated over 4,000 retweeters and quote-tweeters, who were torn between both nostalgia and scorn for that nostalgia, since this “chill” time was, in fact, right after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 

“One day children will be saying this about your terrifying and stressful childhoods too and you’ll feel pretty silly,” one user replied. 

But this video isn’t native to Twitter. It was actually pulled from TikTok, where it was posted in April 2021 and subsequently received over 24 million views. It’s part of a genre of early-2000s high school footage that regularly receives hundreds of thousands if not millions of views whenever it’s posted on the app. Some of these “nostalgic” videos are from as recently as 2016. 

“Why does this seem so long ago,” one commenter wrote on a 2016 video.