The Linux users have arrived

minimalism kills creativity

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

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.

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

They took our skins...

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

Customisation is how i got into graphic design. There was this diary type of website. And i had spent so much time doing it, I've learned how to use photoshop, how to draw, how to make animations, how to record and make music as a theme for my diary. Man. It was so fun

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.

New windows is like a room with no furniture

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.

nostalgia hits different when you are in your 20s

growing up I always liked everything default, whether that was my computer's theme, wallpaper, or even my weapon in a video game. No skins, no themes, just the original look. But now, I want to do anything I possibly can in order to get AWAY from that original look. I think it's probably because everything is so dull now, back on Windows XP, and even windows 7, you had COLORS, GRAPHICS, and the design overall was still so good even if you didn't customize it. I'm talking green, blue, transparent, red, orange, LITERALLY EVERYTHING. Now, you open your windows machine and its like, white, black, grey, and WOW BLUE!!! I yearn for the customization!!!! BTW great video I love your channel!!

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.

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

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 :[

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

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

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 💙

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.

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 KZfaq 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 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.

That derpy crashing through the windows wallpaper AND the bubbles screensaver is EXACTLY how my high school partner had their setup

7:27 AND IT'S MINE hits hard man❤

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

How strange that such a random and silly video has meant more to me than most things I watch on here

I wasn’t raised in this era, I was actually born as it faded away. Though I still did grow up watching stuff like Classic SpongeBob, Fred, Annoying Orange and more. Today at the age of 15 I find this stuff so interesting because….Well I dunno, But what I do know! Is for some reason am really into customisation and I think that’s due to my creativity and probably my adhd. I do wish stuff was still like this. I’m probably one of the few people in the world that changed the color of the task bar on windows 10. I was craving customisation soo bad, I went as far as to be wacky and flip the task bar on its side and put it on the right of the screen. As a fan of half-life I really want that themed media player soo bad.

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

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

The real problem is minimalism, it kills personality and self expression

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

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

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 😁👍

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

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 :)

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

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 KZfaq. 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.

9:38 seeing anything ddi related in the wild makes me so excited i can't even begin to describe

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

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!!

9:50 Why NOT customizable you ask? To customize, you got to have opinions, to study things, to notice, to observe and apreciate details between different designs/themes/worlds , and so on. These characteristics had the internet users (creative researchers, curious learners..) until 2007 ish... Then everything slowly went one design for everyone, for the masses and most people are not creative, etc..most people prefer to get it ready than to do the creative efford and make it themselves. And that is where we are today... Being a person who likes to design I would say encourage more people to do this..we need it!

Omg I love the derpy windows background lmao

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.

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

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.

that turtle unlocked so much things in my head after u showed me that wallpaper

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

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 :)

There's an app called Swivel made by Newgrounds which is used for animators but still encapsulates the Y2K era design

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 KZfaq 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.

kid named kde plasma:

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.

Fun fact: The screensavers weren’t the first time Nintendo and Microsoft teamed up because in 1998, Microsoft did develop collections of their very own PC games and make a collection of them on the Game Boy Color.

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.

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.

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 KZfaq 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

Really fun video. Felt very nostalgic.

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

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

Man this video just took me down memory lane. I experienced all of these things except for the Windows 7 themes. But myspace and original youtube, yeah. good times. we need to bring back the good things that just gave that signature of personalization.

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 ...

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.

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

Man you make me laugh so much, I love your channel

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

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

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 you brotherhood of steel member for reminding me of what we lost with old technology.

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

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.

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

i hate having our creativity, themes, and nostalgia being taken away, its like they want to take away the good stuff from us.

You unlocked the memory of KZfaq themes for me wow lol I miss 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’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”

I wasn't even from that time with Windows XP, but I still wanted themes like that so much 😭😭 having something unique for you is such a good thing

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.

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)

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.

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

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.

I didn’t even know windows had themes! Nice video

Our generation was the best. You made me ultra nostalgic today, thanks! I subbed.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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!

Just found you channel I cant get enough I am binging all your videos🙏

yayy neocities mention. neocities webmasters rise up!!

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!!

As someone who worked in web design while this happened, its about inclusion and accessibility. Which you mentioned. Simple designs are easier to make accessible to people with vision challenges or motor skill challenges and small touch screens can be very hard to design for. At the same time, I had a lot of fun making some crap bizarre websites and app themes back then when I was the only one using them. Thanks for the video

I was born in the early 90s and grew up with computers and the internet. When I was old enough to get my own xp computer, I loved how much I could customize it. At the peak of my Pokemon phase, I downloaded an unnown font and used it for everything. When I started listening to metal, I changed my startup sound to somebody screaming into a mic. There was even a time when I made a Pokemon sprite into a custom cursor for my mother. I remember being introduced to Vocaloid through a Hatsune Miku fan's profile with a video of a Miku cover of Ne Ni Ge de Reset embedded on it. As an edgy teen, I customized a profile on one site with a custom Blood+ theme I was able to put together myself. Everywhere you looked on the internet, you would see fragments of other peoples' personalities and opportunities to share your own passions and interests with others through customization options which told people a little about yourself before they even read anything. Computers, the internet, and even fast food restaurants used to be full of personality, but now they feel cold and robotic. The more companies push to sanitize everything to make it inoffensive, the more offensive it becomes to the human spirit.

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

Man, this is the most nostalgia I’ve experienced all at once. The internet in its infancy was the bomb, dude. People AND COMPANIES cared about expressing themselves. I used to go as far as to downloading replacer programs along with theme packs off places like deviant art. There would always be so many unique options to pick from and there was always some new theme I had to try out. Ever tried custom shells back in the day? There were a few but man some of them were cool, like talisman desktop. Good times man. I’ll never forget those days.