Top 20 Things From the 2010s That Don't Exist Anymore

#20: Needing More Than Your Phone

If you grew up before the rise of smartphones, you might remember teachers telling us that when we’re adults, we won’t be walking everywhere with a calculator in our pockets. Turns out, we all do. This wasn’t the case until the mid-2010s. By 2012, only half of all Americans had smartphones. Instead, people had to bring other things with them, like cameras, MP3 players, books and flashlights. Now, these things are considered retro and cumbersome. What’s the point in wearing a watch or buying an alarm clock when your phone does it all? Many people don’t even use their phone as a phone anymore, with FaceTime becoming preferred to voice calls.

#19: Juicero

The 2010s were when technology became ridiculously monetized. The peak of this trend was arguably the Juicero, a concept so absurd that it makes no sense how it was ever made. It was a juicer, as the name implies, except that, unlike every other juicer, this one needed a Wi-Fi connection and proprietary fruit packets. Turned out, these packets could be squeezed by hand, making the $699 machine redundant. It was so unpopular that they eventually reduced the price to $399, which was still hundreds more than most other juicers. They shut down in 2017, as the founders failed to realize juicers had been around for decades, and making them more restrictive doesn’t sell well.

#18: Dubstep

In the ‘90s, the house subgenre garage was huge in the UK. From this movement, dubstep emerged, becoming massively mainstream in the early 2010s. The face of mainstream dubstep was easily the producer Skrillex. In 2010, his “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites” EP gained global fame. The genre was everywhere online, with countless YouTube videos beginning with an excessively intense dubstep intro. By 2015, the craze had died down entirely, and it was no longer mainstream. That wasn’t the end for dubstep, though; it simply returned to being a niche. Also, it was a major influence on the later hyperpop movement, but that genre has similarly lost momentum.

#17: Limited Texts

It used to be the case that you were only allowed a limited number of texts per month. In the olden days, texts and calls were the main way to communicate over long distances. This made every text sent way more valuable. Even when you had a contract allowing for unlimited texts, they were never truly infinite. Now, virtually every contract offers unlimited texts. And if it doesn’t, why would you care? Apps like WhatsApp exist, and let you message to your heart's content, as long as you’re connected to Wi-Fi. Data limits have instead become the main thing to compare when ordering a phone contract.

#16: Flash Games

If you went to school in the 2000s or the 2010s, you probably have memories of playing Flash games in computer classes. Tragically, in 2020, many of us lost this part of our childhood as Flash was discontinued. Most of them still exist, thankfully, and are kept alive via other programs. They’re sadly not as popular as they once were though. As computers have gotten increasingly powerful, Flash games have been pushed out of the market. Why would someone want to play a game in their browser, when most modern PCs and smartphones can run games like “Minecraft?”

#15: Teavana

In 1997, the beverage chain Teavana was founded in Georgia. They eventually grew to have stores all across North America and even in the Middle East. In 2012, they were bought by Starbucks; and 5 years later, all their stores had shut down. You can still buy a handful of their products from Starbucks, but it’s not the same as before. It was a cafe where you could relax with a pot of tea, trying a variety of blends. Some theorize that people came to prefer less time-consuming cafes, making Teavana inconvenient. Others think Starbucks bought them solely to shut down competition. The motives don’t change the final result, though, which is that Teavana is long gone.

#14: Nintendo 3DS

Quite a lot of people consider the 3DS to be the greatest handheld gaming console ever made. The invention of the Switch and handheld PCs means they’re not as prominent anymore, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t an amazing system. It was released in 2011 and discontinued in 2020, making it a staple of the 2010s. They’re far cheaper now, but are still worth the price tag, since they’re so moddable. Games could be stored on its internal memory or SD card, rather than the other DSes, where a flash cartridge was needed. So, even though they’re not being made anymore, millions are still playing them.

#13: Saturday Morning Cartoons

For decades, children across the globe would tune into a variety of cartoons every Saturday morning. Well, did you know they haven’t existed for years? It would be easy to miss, since fewer and fewer people are watching live TV. That’s the problem, of course. Most children get an unlimited stream of cartoons from the Internet or Netflix. They had mostly vanished in Canada by 2002, and then in the mid-2010s in the U.S. Thankfully, cartoons are far from a dying format. If anything, they’re in a better spot today than ever before, with cartoons being made for people of all ages.

#12: 3D Televisions

It’s quite hilarious when you remember there was a time when people thought all TVs would become 3D. In the early 2010s, the market was oversaturated with expensive 3D televisions. Now, OLED and 4K UHD are the new trends. The reason they failed is simple: they just weren’t that good. Most needed flashy glasses for the effect, which was a pain for organizing a group movie night. The ones that didn’t need glasses weren’t much better, and both would cause eye strain after prolonged use. It wasn’t just the TV you needed; you’d need a 3D-capable device, such as a 3D Blu-ray. It’s just not worth the effort, and the fad’s unlikely to make a comeback.

#11: Facebook Games

In the late 2000s and early 2010s, Facebook was the biggest social media platform. Now, it’s got way more competition and has declined massively. If you were signed up during its peak era, you’ll probably remember being flooded with game invites. If not, that’s probably because you were the one sending them. Many required having friends to progress, which was a major factor in their popularity. Famous examples include “Dragon City” and, of course, “FarmVille.” Many of these games were developed by Zynga, which was acquired by Take-Two Interactive in 2022 and isn’t as prominent as it once was.

#10: Netflix Mailing DVDs

For those who only know Netflix as a streaming service, allow us to tell you about how the company started. Netflix was always about movies. In the late 1990s, when they first came on the scene, they did so as a DVD-by-mail service. They would send you DVDs in the mail—you would watch them and send them back. It was a great concept. And by February of 2007, they had already mailed out 1 billion DVDs. Then they got into streaming. By 2009, streaming had overtaken DVD shipments—and the trend just kept growing. In September of 2023, Netflix sent out its last DVD. Most people probably would’ve assumed the mail service part of the business had ended even earlier than that.

#9: PlayStation Vita

While the Playstation Portable gets most of the nostalgia love when it comes to PS handheld devices, we hope there are some of you who remember the PlayStation Vita with some fondness. Released in Japan in 2011, and in North America and Europe the following year, the Vita sold well at first but saw a pretty big drop-off after the launch excitement wore off. General opinions of the device also seemed to cool with the passage of time, and sales numbers never reached what Sony had hoped. It probably didn’t help that during this same time was the growth in smartphones, which meant we all had handheld gaming systems in our pockets. The Vita was discontinued in 2019.

#8: Papyrus

Papyrus, the material, was first manufactured in Egypt in the third millennium BCE. Papyrus, the stationery and greeting card store, opened its first location in 1973. And by 1991, there were 37 stores across the United States. In 2009, that number grew to a few hundred—but it was all downhill from there. Papyrus attributed their downfall to a few factors: overexpansion, an increase in digital shopping and subsequent decrease in in-person shopping, and strain from the 2008 financial crisis. In 2020, the Papyrus stores that were still around all closed down and the company is no longer.

#7: The Nokia Lumia Smartphone

We can’t talk about the Nokia Lumia smartphone without talking about Microsoft’s attempt to get into the mobile phone game in the 2010s. That’s because the Lumia phones were exclusively running the Windows Phone operating system. Windows Phone definitely had its fans, and the Lumia was a well-liked device with sales growing fairly consistently from 2011 through 2014. So, what happened in 2014? Well, Microsoft—which completed the purchase of Nokia in 2014—began to gradually eliminate the Nokia name. And in 2015, they introduced the Microsoft Lumia running the new Windows 10 Mobile OS. Sales began to drop, and by 2017, the Lumia was pretty much done.

#6: iPods

“1,000 songs in your pocket.” While these days, anyone with a Spotify, YouTube Music or Apple Music subscription has way more than 1,000 songs in their pocket, back at the turn of the century this was a huge deal. When Apple launched the iPod line in 2001, the ability to load up all of our MP3 files onto one cool device was as exciting as the company’s famed silhouette ad campaign made it seem. And remember the click wheel? How awesome was that? But while there are plenty of us who still cherish our old iPods, 2022 was the final year of their production.

#5: Microsoft Kinect

Motion sensor control gaming without the need for physical controllers sounds pretty cool. And it was fairly revolutionary back in 2010 when Microsoft introduced their Kinect. Indeed it was pretty cool, and initial sales were impressive—so much so that their 8 million sales in the first 60 days set a Guinness World Record for the “Fastest Selling Consumer Electronics Device.” But they couldn’t keep up the pace. By 2017, after officially discontinuing the Kinect in favor of honing in on more in-demand products, Microsoft informed the public that they had sold a total of 35 million units.

#4: Wii U

The Wii U is often the forgotten Nintendo console. Lasting from 2012 through 2017, the Wii U was the follow-up to the highly successful Wii and the predecessor to the popular Nintendo Switch. It had the cool, innovative Wii U GamePad with the built-in touchscreen—and it was the first Nintendo console to support HD graphics. But sales never reached the levels Nintendo would’ve wanted, and the Wii U became more of a bridge between beloved console generations than a standout device on its own. Sure, some of us still play on our Wii Us, but most folks have moved on in their gaming lives.

#3: Portable GPS Unit

But with the explosion of smartphones and map apps, these devices have been rendered largely obsolete. To be fair, they do still exist, but serve a fairly niche market—primarily used for outdoor activities like hiking in remote areas.

#2: Vine

You might think that 6 seconds isn’t long enough to do anything meaningful. But for 5 years, Vine proved that it most definitely was long enough. The video sharing site that allowed users to post 6-second long clips became very popular—and even launched some of its users into the limelight. Can you say Shawn Mendes, for example? In 2013, Vine was a revolution, but as competitors got into the space and creators started moving on to other platforms, Vine just couldn’t keep going. By 2016, more than half of the app's most popular users had moved to other services. In 2017, Vine said goodbye.

#1: Blackberry Phones Everywhere

When’s the last time you saw a BlackBerry phone in the wild? There was a time in the 2000s and 2010s when it would’ve been very easy to answer that question, because BlackBerry phones were everywhere. Sure, iPhones and Androids were beginning to take over, but BlackBerry lovers were a very dedicated bunch—and getting them off those keypad devices was a herculean task. The phones didn’t get the nickname “Crackberry” by accident. BlackBerry sales reached their peak in 2011. But by Q4 of 2016, they sold so few units that BlackBerry’s market share was nearly nonexistent. BlackBerry stopped manufacturing devices in 2016 and shut down its services on January 4, 2022.

What was your favorite part of the 2010s pop culture, and is it still popular today? Let us know in the comments below!