Remember MSN Messenger? 15 things everyone who used it will remember

For a lot of us, the 2000s internet was instant messaging. Here are the things everyone who used the old messengers will remember. How many did you do?

1. Waiting for the dial-up to connect. The screech, the hiss, and someone picking up the phone halfway through.
2. Your first screen name. Usually involving xX, Xx, a tilde, a sparkle and your year of birth. We wrote a whole post about them.
3. Song lyrics as your personal message. Always vague. Always about someone. Everyone knew.
4. Appearing offline so you could see who was on without them seeing you.
5. Setting yourself to Away to look busy and mysterious.
6. The sign-in pop-up sliding up from the corner, and the little jolt when it was them.
7. Nudge wars. One nudge became five, became a window shaking across the screen.
8. "is typing a message…" appearing, disappearing, appearing again. What were they deleting?!
9. Emoticon codes. (Y) for thumbs up, (L) for a heart, :$ for blushing. Here's the full cheat sheet.
10. Ten conversation windows at once, all flashing orange on the taskbar.
11. Display pictures of your favourite band, your pet, or a very dramatic black-and-white selfie.
12. Group conversations where nobody could work out who invited who.
13. Being kicked off the computer by a sibling who "needed it for homework".
14. "brb" that actually meant "mum needs the phone line".
15. Saying goodnight for 20 minutes. "ok bye" "bye" "night" "you go first" "no you".

The good news

You can do all of it again. Chatroom is a free, independent chat site that brings back the contact list, nudges, emoticons, personal messages, sign-in pop-ups and chat rooms, for New Zealand, in your browser. It isn't affiliated with Microsoft; it's just built by people who miss it too.

Sign up free, set your personal message to something cryptic, and wait for someone to ask what it means.