I miss the 90s/2000s internet too, but I'm also realistic about it. Dialup sucked, search engines sucked, it was easy for random stuff to brick your computer a

I miss the 90s/2000s internet too, but I'm also realistic about it. Dialup sucked, search engines sucked, it was easy for random stuff to brick your computer and it was hard for anything you published to reach an audience. If you think ads now are bad, they were even worse back then. What people miss is the slower sense of community. Social media has removed all boundaries between smaller local communities and many people aren't interested in finding one. So a lot of people have local friends, and then the amorphous blob of people on social media that they throw posts into. But these things still exist. You can find forums with only a couple hundred users, or circles of blogs. There are IRC channels dedicated to niche interests. I haven't engaged with proper social media in years because I realized the above and just...left.