i know it as a "web 2.0 thing", but i guess that counts as old-school internet now.

that was all set off by flickr - they might not have been the first to do it, but they were the first to get popular enough to set off a wave of imitators.

Feels like late 2000s to very early 2010s. And note that it was never -er, the -r was invariably preceded by a consonant. Thankfully, subsequent naming schemes stopped disemvoweling words.

US and USSR