msn messenger '00s

16 Weird Things We Did On MSN Messenger When We Were Teens

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“U k?”, “BRB”, and “GTG” — these are a few phrases you probably haven’t typed since your teen years, at least since the days of MSN Messenger.

If you grew up in the ’00s, then MSN was probably a huge part of your high school experience. In the years before WhatsApp, Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook were the main online spaces where your friends would congregate, MSN was basically all we had. And it was so much fun!

MSN was where we would spend hours messaging with our friends, the same friends who we had just spent hours with all day at school. But most importantly, MSN is where most of us got to interact with our first crushes.

When it came to creating your first username, writing a status, speaking to friends or crushes, or even frenemies you would like to avoid, there was a lot of weird things we did on MSN, and it’s time to talk about them.

*Nudge, nudge, nudge!* Get ready to feel embarrassed all over again.

16 weird things we all did on MSN Messenger when we were teens:

1. Creating an embarrassing username that will haunt you forever.

When it came to usernames it was all about originality, and teens typically chose names to appear much cooler or more badass than they were. While some of us simply used our own name with a few numbers attached, the bolder kids would embrace something like ‘bootylicious577’, or ‘badgal666′, and if you put the number ’69’ anywhere in your user, you were just asking to get roasted.

I’m pretty sure mine was something like ‘meowmeow23’ and tbh, I stand by it!

2. Overusing your nudge privileges.

Nudging was awesome! There isn’t really a modern-day equivalent: while you can now follow up an ignored message with a few exclamation marks or the always passive-aggressive ‘…?’, it’s not nearly as annoying as nudging. Sending a nudge on MSN would cause the receiver’s entire window to shake, along with an unnerving noise blaring out their speakers.

Due to nudging being such a nuisance, most of us would persistently nudge certain people just to get a rise out of them, before MSN would send the dreaded “You may not send a Nudge that often”, so you’d have to wait until you could nudge another day. The indignity!

3. Make finding your crush’s addy your top priority.

“What’s your number?” is tired, in the ’00s, it was all about “What’s your addy?” Finding out your crush’s hotmail address so you could add them on MSN was crucial information. After all, MSN was for teens who wouldn’t say a word to their crush all day at school but then send essays to them at night.

4. Changing your status to lyrics to seem cooler, or to get attention.

MSN statuses were chaos! Choosing a status was a way to give yourself a brand, you could pick the colour, the font, and add as many emoticons as possible. But the coolest statuses were song lyrics, most often lyrics to reflect your current state, or at least what you wanted to present to your contact list.

And no matter what, you always assumed your crush’s status was somehow about you, even if it was just a quote from Step Brothers. 

 

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5. Strategically choosing music in Windows Media Player, so people would know what you were playing.

If you wanted to go a step further, linking up your Windows Music Player with MSN would enable your contacts to see what you were listening to. You were, of course, very aware of this, so if your emo crush was online, you’d play exclusively My Chemical Romance, while when your besties were online, you’d switch to S Club 7 or The Pussycat Dolls.

6. Getting pissed off if any of your friends had a similar status.

As your status was basically your only way to wield your individuality as a teen, if your friend (or more often that person in class you rarely spoke to) had the same font colour, emoticon selection, or any other vague similarities — this was an act of war.

7. Logging in and out again so your crush got a notification.

This was the ’00s equivalent of posting thirst traps on your Instagram Stories — you wanted to get your crush’s attention, which would prompt them to (hopefully) message you. How many times should one log in and out for attention? The limit does not exist!

8. Telling your friend to “be online” at a certain time every day after school.

Take me back to a simpler time of telling your bestie to be “online at 4:30pm” five days a week for the entire school year.

9. Speaking in nothing but abbreviations.

Who has the time to type full sentences when you can write like this: “hy wot up, r u gd? I gd 2. hw ws skool 2dy?” As soon as you joined MSN, you had to become fluent in basically another language, and if you were speaking to someone who didn’t understand an abbreviation, it was deeply embarrassing for them.

And if you said “brb”, you were never coming back.

10. Getting your friend to ask your crush about you.

The aim was for them to then copy/paste the entire conversation back to you. A flawless plan that usually ended in you hurting your own feelings.

11. Noticing someone you know is never online anymore, only to discover they’d blocked you.

It usually started when you asked your friend “is X online rn?” before finding out that they were, which meant you were blocked. Then would come the shame of having to get your friend to ask them why they blocked you in the first place.

12. Appearing offline until your friends or crush logged on.

You NEVER want to be that person who is always online, you have a busy life, with many things to do. Instead, you would click on the ‘Appear Offline’ option and wait, staring at your screen until someone fun came along. This was typically to prevent never-ending conversations with certain people you wanted to avoid, like the same person who was always online at 3am on a Wednesday.

13. Having to endure awkward moments when you accidentally bitch about your friend… to your friend.

With countless conversation boxes open, it’s hard to keep track of who you’re speaking to. This makes mixing up message boxes especially common, and who hasn’t messaged their friend Melissa, “omg melissa is so annoying!” only to follow it up with “hahah jk! different melissa! :p”.

Nailed it.

14. Having a meltdown after your crush signs off suddenly while you’re speaking.

There was nothing worse than your crush signing off while you were in the middle of a conversation — especially if you had just sent a risky message. It always happened after you’d work yourself up to finally tell your crush that you liked them, then all of a sudden they would sign off, leaving you to wonder what it all means.

Cue an absolute emotional breakdown and several hours of your friends telling you “they probably just had a bad connection!”

msn messenger '00s

Via PEN15

15. Judging people looks based on their username.

MSN wasn’t just for friends and crushes you knew from high school, it was also another way to socialise with new people — people you had never met irl, that were from different schools, or friends of friends. These interactions with practical strangers could turn flirtatious, which meant that the only way you could judge someone’s hotness — and therefore see if there was a physical attraction — would be by judging their screen names.

It doesn’t make logical sense but people with usernames like ‘surferboi76’ or ‘flirtyguurl15’ were considered hot property.

16. Losing your goddamn mind when you couldn’t log in.

Unlike the high-speed internet options we have today, the early ’00s were a radically different time where your internet connection was as moody as your big sister after you borrowed her hair straightener. Internet would drop in and out constantly, and every time you would be logged out of MSN. The horror! This could occur at any time, even when you were just about to find out if your crush broke up with his on-and-off girlfriend.

Once you were logged out, it was a waiting game to find out if you could get back in — and the wait was excruciating.

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It truly was the best of times AND the worst of times.