When did the dot-com era end for you? When the NASDAQ tanked? When Boo.com imploded? When wearing a suit (i.e, having a job) became cool again?

I would argue that it actually ended (in New York) last Tuesday night, in three separate, apparently coincidental, finales.

My friend Lisa -- appropriately, an unemployed Internet creative director -- and I decided that attending three events might help us bring closure to the last several years, exorcise a few demons, and all while snagging some free hors d'oeuvres. Here's what we found:

7:30 PM, CyberSuds: Since the mid 1990s, the New York New Media Association (NYNMA, and don't feel bad if you confuse it with NAMBLA, everybody does) has sponsored "CyberSuds," a boozy gathering of twenty-ish project managers and the occasional Internet celebrity (full disclosure: I am a NYNMA member).

The invitation for Tuesday's event at One51 had a sober, job-fair quality to it: "Ready to make career-enhancing connections? Bring your resume, your networking savvy and your friends -- If you're job-hunting, here's a preview of the companies that will be at CyberSuds and the positions they are seeking to fill..."

Men in ties and women in sensible pumps packed the place, clustered in small groups, attempting to look at ease. People we'd last seen sporting dot-com chic (black Doc Martens, square-frame glasses, sundry nasal and brow piercings) during the dot-com bubble now appeared more like an old businessperson's idea of what young businesspeople should look like.

"Where do you think the Internet is going?" asked a man in an ill-fitting suit.

"I think it's going like this," said another, his hand undulating the path of a roller coaster curve.

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In another corner, the Resume Doc, the Career Counselor, and Nell, the Tech Recruiter kept busy doling out career advice on resumes, interviews and job searches. The upholstery surrounding them lent the setting the air of an analyst's office.

"Most people put too much on their resumes," said the Resume Doc.

"Especially when most of it isn't true," added the Career Counselor.

Nell, the Tech Recruiter, declared that anyone without enterprise software development skills didn't have much hope in the current job market. Lisa and I interpreted this as a recommendation to have another cocktail.

8:45 PM, Venture Reporter Party: The publication formerly known as Silicon Alley Reporter, now called Venture Reporter, billed the event as the "Back to Reality Party." To emphasize the point, the venue was a McDonald's on 34th Street and 10th Avenue. Ostensibly held to celebrate the publication of its "Top 100 Venture Capitalists" issue (full disclosure: I spend a great deal of time sucking up to VCs), the party featured Big Macs and Veuve Cliquot, the former complimentary for anyone willing to brave the line, the latter mixed into dot-com nostalgia cocktails such as the McKozmo, "The classic Mimosa delivered in less than an hour."

As the invitation promised, "It's a different world."

Did we say McDonald's? We meant McDonald's parking lot, which featured a Rolls Royce in the far corner as a reminder of how we'd once seen our future (it had to be returned to its real owner halfway through the party). Inside the restaurant, unforgiving fluorescent bulbs shone a harsh light on the wretched refuse of the Internet economy. Outside, intermittent storms rained on the dot-com parade. Those hanging onto jobs munched fries alongside the unemployable. Nobody compared options packages.

"Every two years they clean the whole thing out," a French woman told Lisa, gesturing to the air around her. It was unclear if she was referring to the high-tech industry or the restaurant.

10:00 PM, F***ed Company Party: The dot-com deadpool site, a sort of evil twin to new economy booster Fast Company - rose to prominence as a Web forum where disgruntled employees posted gossip from inside their failing dot-coms. Malicious and unsubstantiated as these rumors were, they turned out, by and large, to be more accurate than the statements being released by the firms' PR departments (maybe if we'd all spent more time working and less time surfing the Web, maybe our companies would've done better).

Founder "Pud," a.k.a. Philip Kaplan, has compiled a new book "F'd Companies: Spectacular Dot-com Flameouts" (Simon & Schuster) and is promoting the book by touring with his band, Spel, featuring Pud on drums and two guitarists whose volume knobs go up to eleven, if you know what we mean.

The crowd at the Cutting Room lacked the fidgety coolness of the NYNMA mixer and the self-conscious "fin-de-siecle-ness" of the Venture Reporter party. Maybe this was the real lesson from attending these, the net-net, as they say: For many, the burst bubble is not such a big deal. As one young woman put it, "If you got out of college in the last two years, it's always been a "f***ed company." You don't miss what you never almost had.

As the band tested the limits of human decibel tolerance, Lisa and I decided the Internet economy hadn't died. It had just become tedious. Then we hailed a cab and went home (full disclosure: we took the subway).

Mark Silber is founder and chief marketing officer of Primordial, a Web services software solutions company in New York. Send flames and feedback to: mark@primordial.com