I Miss Themes 

The Linux users have arrived

"It looked horrible, it looked awfull - and it was mine" That hits sooooo hard!!!

minimalism kills creativity

Everything became clean, greyscale and uniform, We have the same issue happening with architecture too, Everything used to be ornamental and unique in western cities, but now everything is grey, brick and square

A lot of the missing features in websites can probably be attributed to the Internet becoming advertiser -friendly. Embedded music players might violate copyright, custom uploaded images could be nsfw or hate speech, manually embedded links could lead to scams or screamers (this was common back in the day). It's not an excuse though, there should be more options for public-facing custom themes. I remember ten years ago Tumblr was still allowing a pretty loose amount of customization for your own blog, even if most people used the default dashboard. For all client-facing themes there's really no excuse at all. I want my RU-vid music desktop player to look like those cool y2k ones! I want to have widgits and bubbles and custom sounds! I'm probably gonna root through windows 11 hacks and find ways to make it happen now.

They took our skins...

"You WILL use our sanitized, soulless designs and you WILL like it!" -Every single corpo from 2010 and onwards

I am in 40's and this really sparked something in me that used to be pure enjoyment, excitement and adventure. You are right, the ability to not change things and contribute towards the community for other people to enjoy is lame. I made and did things for free for others to enjoy and got joy out of knowing that so many others are enjoying with things I made.

I remember ricing up Windows XP lol. We would buy magazines that had CDs attached to them with themes for everything.

Pillars of modern design 1: rounded corners everywhere. 2: a lot of padding and margin in evrything. 3: removing useful extensive features that dummies can not understand.

What we have now some call minimalism but i'd call it brutalism. It's just a utilitarian way to get on your PC and getting to work or consuming media or buying something without distraction or anything in between. No toys or anything to stop and see and appreciate from here to there. Just a dull gray hallway and doors. No nice parks, no nice public art, no nice decorations people put up for fun or to make the space more enjoyable to be in.

nostalgia hits different when you are in your 20s

I was born 10 years before you, so I definitely get it. I grew up through all the customizing. I used winamp, I made skins myself. I had a myspace profile and customized that too. That was fun. I learned HTML, CSS, and how to use programs like Photoshop and Gimp. I still find creative things to dabble in, but it is sad not being surrounded with as much that can be personalized with more than an accent color.

New windows is like a room with no furniture

I'm a middle school teacher in the netherlands. I've been noticing that my students (age 12-17) have been personalising their computers with backgrounds, but mostly with their mouse cursors. Something that will always be visible, and will be unique to them.

Windows 98 had the best themes. Mystery, Space, Inside Your Computer, Travel, Nature... just thinking about it gives me nostalgia. We later upgraded our Windows 98 PC to XP and the old themes carried over in addition to the new XP ones. The early 2000s were an exciting time to be alive as the little computer-nerd boy I was. I wish I could go back, and I wish the new generations could have something just like that to experience today. Maybe they do? I hope so.

Minimalism sucks so much but it's just so easy and safe to do compared to actual style

And discord wants you to PAY for customization, damn it's so over

I had a youtube channel in 2008-9 too and it was like a social media page with my own backgrounds and themes and all that. I was so upset it died when the 2010s rolled in. I loved it so much. Yes, even youtube had "themes" in a broader sense.

I want to live in a windows 7 wallpaper so bad. Humanity yearns to customise. Another brilliant video and I’m a bit ashamed to say I haven’t caught up since your ‘virtual worlds’ video. Fashionably late but im glad im subbed 💙

It crazy how we've devolved to white text on black background, basically back to DOS.

Customization lets you make something truly your own. That's not compatible with Big Tech's vision of you owning nothing.

I played a lot with the themes on Win95. I remember there was a sahara/lion theme and I loved listening to the shutdown sound, Miss that theme a lot. edit: The theme was called Dangerous Creatures

When the startup sound from the Landscapes theme played . I got a deep flashback from my old laptop . It's like wherever I ever go , at anytime in the future , when I hear this it immediately sounds like home to me ...

i always used to love these themes. the first time i turned on my first laptop and got that windows 7 jingle, i remember opening internet explorer and seeing in search results that osama bin laden was killed. i can't unseperate those two memories anymore. it's been a curse ever since. good times.

I finally found someone who appreciates the lost culture of super customizing things. As I loved doing it in every program I used. Those times are missed, but I end up making up for it by customizing my visual studio code more and more.

As someone who's learning to design webpages, I have to say creating both mobile and desktop versions isn't that complicated, you can just have dynamic zoom and resizing and the page will look and function as intended.

As a devout minimalist and aspiring graphic designer with OCD, flat design websites irritate me more than anything. Let me illustrate. Not enough padding here, too much padding there, too many drop down menus, BLOATING, inconsistency with graphic updates because small covert directories are ignored (good, keep it that way), not enough color, not enough variety, what deserves rounded corners and what doesn't, these small insignificant visual details I just can't ignore because they're THE ONLY THINGS ON THE FUCKING SCREEEEEEEN Before flat design was the only design, I could disregard _perfection_ because there was more decoration on the screen to keep my eyeballs occupied. When things were "dirty" they were dirty enough that I didn't think about fixing them. Raster graphics are pieces of art. They don't need to be edited, they don't need to be warped and fondled, they are as they are. That's okay, and they are beautiful the way they are. When _perfection_ is tried, _perfection_ becomes the status quo. _Perfection_ must be maintained. _Perfection_ is highbrow. If you don't do things _perfectly_ you are a subpar piece of human filth. Getting hired is out of the question. It weaves perfectionism into everyone's mind, it's subliminal. Corporate web designers are puppets who had their souls crushed long ago. I wish on a shooting star that Big Tech would hire people who aren't afraid to get decorative and raster dirty, but imperfection is not profitable nor dependable. Remember, Big Tech used to be some nerd fumbling in his garage. It's just business.

tumblr still allows you to completely rewrite the direct html code of your blog page, so you can even make your blog page just not a blog if you want but overtime its become less of an advertised feature and harder to access, and now it doesnt even show up when you go to a blog unless you go to a specific blog link which you basically cant access via the normal site and it doesnt help that nobody uses it anymore because its not visible on mobile at all and its barely accessible anymore, and not to mention how html has kind of become a lost art for the average person nowadays

Shoutouts to Nintendo 3DS homebrew keeping the spirit of relevant custom themes alive

5:08 You just triggered intense nostalgia for me with that one. I had always used that Da Vinci skin back in the days on my first own laptop, thought it was pretty dope. I had pretty much forgotten about it until this video.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR MENTIONING NEOCITIES!! i have a website on there and it's a lot of fun :D i think everyone should try their hand at making one if they have an interest in old web design, it's a great time and there's a friendly community around it :]

The reason these companies have been getting rid of customization is to further cement the fact that you don’t own the product you paid for.

I love that more and more people are realizing how much less creative the world has gotten over the past decade. My prediction for the mid 2020s is that we will finally make things more customizable, and design will become more creative again, especially considering how much demand there is for it. Your RU-vid channel reminds me of the first one i made in 2007 at the age of 10. I used the Wayback Machine to visit websites in the 2000s again, and it brought back so many memories of when the Internet was more alive.

I come to you today as a man who has themed his 10 (SecureUxTheme), his Steam client, (even after support was violently torn out), his media player, his Blender, his TF2 hud (manual mostly), his youtube (Redux), uses tons of other website themes via the Stylus CSS-modifying browser extension, on a themed version of a custom fork of firefox called waterfox all because firefox wouldn't let me install unsigned addons. So much for "Our goal is your satisfaction"...

5:23 maaaaaaan! The feels! I miss those days.... I remember so freaking well this theme for Windows Media Player😢😢😢

Being in my 30s (basically a fossil by internet standards) I remember the early days on the internet and back then literally everything was customizable if you knew a little bit of code, it felt like everyone owned their own little piece of the internet, and I remember when I first started making music MySpace was popular, and being able to essentially turn into into a band website with all the features you'd want (a music player, a place to put flyers, embedding music videos, etc) made every artist stick out from each other. Now everything is uniform and corporate and there's no real way to catch anyone's eyes and ears and it feels like the internet owns you rather than you owning part of it.

Then: "Make the computer personal again" Now: "Make the subscription personal again"

honestly this is the reason i love tumblr. you get to make ur blog/account/whatever u want to call it absolutely however u want with custom themes and other stuff. its amazing and its something websites and stuff dont do anymore :[

Sadly, I never experienced this era of internet but my dad did explain lot of things how today's internet is boring, stale, and nothing like 1990's. It really saddens me and I truly wished that kind of freedom would come back, the freedom to do anything, customize, and whoever else, and it should be more fun, but now RU-vid sucks. All social medias sucks. Designed to be addicting, not for you, but for company's money. I was mad when Steam removed theme feature, too because I was going to customize it soon but now I can't :(, I am actually glad you made this video, it really opened my mind up and made me realized even more further, to be honest. You deserve far more than 300K views on this video man

I’m a little older than you but I remember being legitimately shocked that you couldn’t change or edit a Facebook page like you could on MySpace and RU-vid. I still remember hanging onto MySpace because fb and Twitter just seemed so…plain…. Honestly the whole internet now seems so plain and corporate. Shout out to the people who had the halo theme for windows media player. That shit popped.

THATS WHAT IM SAYING!!!!!!! THIS 100 TIMES!!!!!!!!!! Genuinely my biggest issue with all of technology is simply customizability. My iphone cant have moving backgrounds. I cant change the colors of my windows, cant even make it glossy like it used to be either. My switch is either Light mode or Dark mode. My youtube channel has a banner and a pfp and nothing else. It actually sucks and is so devoid of whimsy or excitment. I really hope we can go back to normalizing more customization. Discord has been adding more profile customization, but at the cost of a MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION, and even paying individually for pfp borders. Steam has a good wealth of options too for your profile, but still at the cost of points from purchasing games. Great video btw, I actually really love this channel, the way you talk about things feels so free-form and naturally funny 😁👍

I feel this video so much. You seem deeply involved in the thoughts you are spitting out. And I absolutely respect it.

Love your enthusiasm, keep it up! Never I'd guess that video about themes will be so entertaining 🙈

I think that's exactly why I see a lot of artist embracing this "old internet style" and I love it

It's so nice to see Gen. Z appreciating the late 00's/early 10's design. There's hope for the world yet.

I love your channel, I'm from Argentina and it's so beautiful found someone that's has the same nostalgic for the internet when we were kids. great job you should do a video talking about the flash games from the 2000s :)

Ah yes, the customization of the GUI... was a thing back in the day, and make something that looks like "no standard" was very appealing. Now they did it, make something boring and "focus" on the task... and made hard to tweak (or even deep tweaking like modify some binaries from the system 32 folder), now all looks soulless and dead, yes we're living in the scrolling times where the users don't care (or almost) anymore about that. Just an little insight. Subscribed, you're funny :)

kid named kde plasma:

kyomaku here, thank you so much for featuring my little website!!! ;__; never thought id make it into a youtube video... no less for my silly little corner of the web >:P

For me, it was Windows 98 where I discovered my custom theme creativity. I once ran a small team of custom theme fans that made custom themes for old versions of Windows, but we stopped in 2018 because interests have changed, and we all had lives. I'm like you, I miss themes so much.

Came here for the thumbnail. Stayed here for the content. You left me with a nostalgic feeling

god i forgot phones truly are probably the reason we dont get fun themes anymore. i know tumblr let u customize and just show the default theme on mobile, but it seems theyre trying rly hard to phase that out lol (tho blogs can still have custom themes if u go out of ur way to view them properly). but i feel like we could have this for other sites too!!

I think the problem with modern trends is not about design preferences or lack of taste, but about density. It's not hard to make these fancy pages responsive. And, for example, our b2b company allows us to make as many little animations and ui goodies as we want. But noone has time for that, cause development schedules are so god damn tight. The internet is no longer a playground. It's a market now.

Windows 7 and XP were one of my favorites in Microsoft's softwares ever. Watching them really brings back so much memories as a kid. Even I constantly have so much fun customizing themes on my computer.

Those startup sounds at the beginning reminded me of a time where life was simple and little me was playing with dad's old bulky acer. Just those sounds alone Made me smile :)

Unix ricing is still alive and well, it’s hard to beat that amount of customization

I began really using the internet after things started getting more uniform and less customizable. So when I learned about the youtube themes and other old social media I felt quite envious of what was taken from me lol

7:27 AND IT'S MINE hits hard man❤

you said what everyone was thinking thank you for being so brave (great vid i loved)

It's literally one of the many notches in the temperature dial for the boiling frog. That boiling frog being the push to remove "Personal" from "Personal Computer"; Microsoft and Apple and Google would rather computers be appliances that you don't truly own.

The internet from the 2000s does have a special place in my heart. Very nostalgic and I agree it was so much more interesting. I think companies locked the designs for uniformity and so that their website is easily distinguishable from others.

This is my new favorite RU-vid channel fr, the way you speak makes me feel like I love my life again

0:41 Derpy Hooves!! All of that early 2010s nostalgia really gets me since I was in high school at that time, I can't believe it's been over a decade

i still miss the freedom of self-expression to this day to the point where i'm insanely happy neocities exists

I remember finding some random sketchy taskbar addon thing that lets you customize your mouse cursor on windows xp. I remember having this flaming cursor that left a little fire trail wherever it went.

thank for telling about neocities man. this revived not only my want to customize but also one silly webpage i made back in 7th grade.

Anyone else remember the Windows 3.1 themes? Just the most lurid colour-vomit and I loved them! Hotdog Stand was bright red and yellow, but my personal fave was Fluorescent - hot pink and neon green!

I’m almost 40 and back around 2002-2003 you were able to download official noise packs for AOL. I had mine set to Mr Moviefone, he would loudly proclaim “Your mail is Rated R”

the derpy hooves crashing through the win7 logo gave me so much nostalgia holy shit

Nowadays everything has to be clean and easy to read. Only 2 or 3 colors can be used as the user can get confused. Before it was all about delivering an experience, to be unique, express your art and put everything in every detail... gosh I miss those days :')

I distinctly remember staring mindlessly at my mom’s laptop while the Windows bubbles just floated around on the screen, for hours

I love how this is a really positive video focusing on the fun, rather than a negative one focusing on the lack of it

Say what you want about Tumblr, but I think they are one of the few social media that allows you to customize your profile/blog. On mobile it only lets you choose background colors, fonts, etc. but on PC/Web browser you can use themes with html code and there are TONS of blog who make a compile themes for you to use

Dude I'm still sad about the second cellphone I owned dying because I miss the themes that came with it, it's been like 17 years :") I still have it, a Motorola something flip phone, no camera and it has that chunky antenna lol but it had a few themes that changed the menu's colors and the background image, I would change it every month and match it with the beaded phone chain/string thingy (no clue what they were called even in my native language). I miss that feeling that small customizations like that gave me. Even with ringback tones, idk if that's still a thing but I know I spent too much money to have different Katy Perry songs as my ringback tones... I guess I eventually just forgot about it. I didn't get to experience this Windows version cause we didn't have a PC back then, but damn I wish that whole concept was still around

On principle I agree, I love customization, but also Windows 10 isn't really much different from 7 in terms of customizability, you can definitely change the taskbar and window border color, that's what I do. You can even tell it to automatically pick a color from your desktop background, which can be fun with rotating backgrounds and you can choose whether it affects the taskbar, window borders or both and can tell it to have some transparency (not as detailed as in 7 but it's not entirely absent) But also I want to emphasize that I definitely agree!! I miss customizability and I love finding apps and programs that let me make my devices feel like mine.

The old channel designs were so unique, I even had some photoshop templates to make a couple for some friends channels

so the thing is, in music production there's so many synths that when booted up, look like some weird futuristic instrument, when it could just look like nothing

tumblr is probably the only "mainstream" social media with customization

I totally feel you! I also like to customize anything and everything. Tweak it to your liking, your own! It's a great thing that you can customize the web on some levels, even if it is only for your experience.

I miss those days a lot. Part of the reason I got into graphic design. You helped me remember my YT channel background image was digital tracings of my online graffiti battles from 2007. I remember thinking those backgrounds were the pinnacle of personalization LOL. Also customizing our Myspaces made us all feel like professional coders every time we would drop lines of code into the profile editor. Good times. Great video too.

One of the reasons why Firefox is still my favorite browser.

Seeing how things are now, I'm so grateful I was born in '89. It was such a great time to be a kid. The world seemed to have so many creative outlets & forms of expression. Ways that kids, teens and adults could enjoy themselves. Places to go, things to do, unique style and design. I really miss the Vibe of that Era where it treated us all like it respected our intelligence, time & experience. While also providing aspects with in our society that help keep our inner kid in us alive. It felt like everything acknowledged how important YOU were as a citizen, customer, fan, person because without us they would be nothing. The creativity that came from that era really put effort into it's ingenuity, not this bland minimalism we see today. I really hope we find a way to reconnect with it because the world really needs it right now. Look how soulless so much has become nowadays? Look at the horrible aesthetics, poor quality & creative design in modern cities, or even in shows, movies, & video games. Things have become so bland, bleek, and minimalistic to the point that it doesn't even make since. Most Old house's/building's/uúnique shop's are gone. Interesting oddities like drive in movies, indoor fun zones, arcade's, magazines that came with a demo disc to try out game's, blockbuster/Hollywood video, McDonald's had N64's & crazy fun zones & art designs all over, you could preview music before buying it, they had great kid's toy's, Roller Rink's, Garbage pale kid's card's. You get the point. Bring back Retro-Futurism or Y2K Vibes. ANYTHING compared to this current Dystopian toxic positivity. Our society feels more lost then it ever has. Society is solely focused on out of control capitalistic agendas. That anything that isn't constantly increasing profits is a failure and has no value to society? Our Quality of Life should be better than this. Basic living shouldn't be this unaffordable. People should be able to have fun, dork around, have things that engage them. The list goes on. Bring me back to the 90's.

Omg this video has brought me a childhood memory. My family’s windows xp PC used to have a sheep screensaver. I loved it, you could see the sheep falling from the top of the screen and getting stuck between the icons. You could even play with them. Good memories 🥹

I miss browsing old personal homepages/sites. It was fun to see what bad midi music would be making the page load so slowly.

I remember in Windows 10 being able to change the title bar and taskbar/start menu colours, there's a checkbox you need to activate under the colours selection menu at 1:30.

@0:18 really got me with that turtle wallpaper , i remember having this wallpaper when i had my own laggy ol windows 7` when i was younger- this image kind of reminded me of the memories i had with the computer - alongside all the other wallpapers - this moment made me a bit emotional for some reason

I dont think ive resonated with and enjoyed a yt vid this much in probably years, even tho I never thought about themes and how sites and social media changed, this really spoke to me. (he went and got the chips :3)

yayy neocities mention. neocities webmasters rise up!!

shouts out to roku for keeping themes alive on streaming sticks. every other kind is just a black void plastered with ads

im 41 seconds in watching this as my first vid on ur channel and im already sympathizing so much with this. u have a cool personality and this is a great video.

I Subscribed Because of your Derpy Hooves “Breaks The 4th Wall of Windows 7” Wallpaper & knowing about Win 7 Silver Theme being the best OG Stock Theme I also like this video a lot as themes and multi personalization in different OS’ & Apps back in the day was much easier and more likely to come across

This was fantastic. Themes really had a hold on everyone in some way in the 2000s, especially on Windows Media Player. It was wild back then.

I love themeing! I themed Steam a handful of times, used to break Windows trying to install themes from XP era to 7 when you'd have to patch system files, and now work in web development where I had the pleasure of setting up a dark theme for our development system.

"theres 10 here, just for jackie chan, thats so fun and cool" you're so fun and cool, cus thinking that is even cool and appreciating life for how it is gives me hope for living :)

Thanks for the tip-off that themes are still a thing, will need to look into that!

I love seeing how many variations there were, these were so pivotal in making things unique and fun and there was just so much love put in to making these cool custom things and sharing them online for other people to use! Bring BACK custom themes and skins!!

holy shit when you were talking about myspace i was like "is he gonna mention spacehey??" and then you did :DDD

Great video man, can totally relate to what you are saying. I had my first computer in the days of Windows XP (before even SP2 existed), but since I had no internet connection, my theme of choice was the silver slick one. Can't remember which Windows Media Player skin I prefered at the time, though. When Internet was mostly available and more affordable, everyone had a hi5 profile, which you could customize with html coding, and it was awesome. Nowadays, giving a bit of freedom to the end user is a bit risky.

for youtube, it was so fun to have different backgrounds, banners and fonts. I still remember very well seeing these until like 2011, even though we alrealdy had the iphone app (with old TV 📺 icon) that had no customization. i miss those times where everybody had its own personal space on every website and on your computer. I literally spent hours watching the visualizations of the windows media player on win xp