None of the sequelae of that have really improved since then, at least in the first world. The foundations of universal surveillance were being laid down, but it wasn’t yet feasible. Police (transport security, border patrol, potato, pot-ah-to) ruffling through your belongings had not yet been normalized. You could transact with cash. People largely still sort of believed that talking to your political opponents would lead to better outcomes than making them comply under threat of government violence or unemployment.

(Plenty of things sucked, don’t get me wrong, it’s just that a lot of the fallout from the “war on terror” was still in the upper atmosphere.)

By year 2000, there were plenty "proprietary" messengers - yahoo, aim, icq, qq, and a bunch more. All of which were simple enough to reverse engineer, so Linux user could just install Gaim (later renamed Pidgin) and connect to most any of those.

What's more, there were already two open standards: SIP/SIMPLE, and newer XMPP.

I actively avoid using navigation. If I’ve already been there once I’ll just try get there without it.

Sometimes I check the route on Google maps first to get an idea, then close it.

I think navigation is like a muscle and you’ve got to train it.

Though I do like rerouting depending on traffic conditions. I guess in some cities that would basically feel mandatory to use

Every generation has their “good ole days.” Unfortunately the old days never were that good for people who were around at the time.

The OP doesn't claim the it was the peak of humanity, the claim is much tighter than that: it was the perfect balance of technology usage.

Almost universally, any time closer to today is better for most people in most ways than a previous time. But there are exceptions -- prehistoric hunter/gatherer lifestyle is superior in several ways to the modern one, but the risk of dying early in a horrible way is high enough that it's not true overall.

Should we live more like cavemen in very constrained specific ways? Probably. Do we want to force 8 billion people to starve to death by returning to that life? Heck no.

Similar, there are likely small parts of the 2000's that are better than today. That doesn't mean the 2000's are the peak of humanity.

What is truly unfortunate is that if there was an objective way of looking at history, people would just dismiss it as "oh, shut up, it's just nostalgia."

So what if the early 2000s were, in fact, the peak of humanity? It doesn't seem so absurd when teenage people today rediscover 90s/2000s fashion and are nostalgic for an era they have never lived in. When I was a teenager in the 2000s I didn't give a rat's arse about the 80s, they felt old and stale and with terrible hairdos. Yet today young people yearn for the 00s aesthetic than whatever sanitised corporate hell we live in today.

Agree 100%

One of the best books I’ve ever read, extremely enlightening.

Early 2000s in my corner of Eastern Europe (Romania) was a very optimistic time. Higher salaries for locally employed educated people were on the horizon, while there was also the ability to work seasonally abroad and make a good sum that could be invested back home. Infrastructure started to see improvement through EU funds.

In fact, it was a far more optimistic time than since about 2020, as soaring cost of food and going out means even privileged middle-class people are complaining, and infrastructure improvements have stagnated.

Yimspeak.

I think it started on LinkedIn, where posts got more reach depending on how many users clicked the 'See More' expander link, so users who wanted to be 'Thought Leaders' were incentivised to present their banal ideas using as many newlines as possible.

This was how I learnt to write, as it's how I think.

I latter learnt in school that writing is only deemed correct when it's stylised into elaborate sentences structures that no human would use when thinking in their own heads.

If you're just trying to convey a thought I don't know why people care?

Could you not understand the point OP was making or something? In what way is this a less valid way of writing (aside from the fact it's not what's taught as correct in school?)