Some of it I honestly feel a lot of it is more the deep commercialization of the Internet, frankly. A lot of modern "commercialization" has involved "clickbait"

Some of it I honestly feel a lot of it is more the deep commercialization of the Internet, frankly. A lot of modern "commercialization" has involved "clickbait" that is designed to produce some sort of emotion (often outrage at frankly incorrect information). This goes beyond the adverts -- a fair bit of Youtube entertainment feels like cheap stunts chasing clicks to me, reminding me more of the type of tactics reality TV engages in than anything else. The Internet of the 2000s was more about blogs (eg Livejournal) and forums (like Something Awful, Fark, etc.). A lot of these were not solely advertiser-driven businesses (LJ and SA in particular relied on premium features for revenue from what I recall) and maybe that's a key difference. True, maybe some of it was because "we were young" -- I am in the same age group. But I dunno -- there was a time when I used Facebook quite a bit as well. This is no longer the case. Yet I'm still on a few obscure phpBB forums that seem quite fine to me.