Throwback Thursday 1998: The Year Before Everything Got Complicated

Shane Hewitt and The Nightshift · Apr 17, 2026 · 9m

1998 nostalgia hits differently once someone points out that it was actually the last safe year. Google arrived. Email became something everyone had. Cell phones showed up in pockets that had never held one before. And none of the bad stuff had taken hold yet. Every website looked different. Loading one felt like going somewhere.

What does it feel like to look back at a year that was genuinely exciting about the future without knowing what the future was actually going to do? The internet in 1998 was surfing. An adventure. A place where you booted up the phone line and went exploring. Pokemon…