I'm not as old as you guys (I was born in 1993!), but I still remember some of these old feelings going on the internet as a young person. And I agree that surf

I'm not as old as you guys (I was born in 1993!), but I still remember some of these old feelings going on the internet as a young person. And I agree that surfing Tor is the closest I've come in a long time to re-creating that unknown excitement that "the web" once held for us. (I had about 30 minutes of computer time a day until I was in my mid-teens, so the internet remained novel for me for a long time). Part of it is HOW you explore the onion network: via links, often subtle, from other sites. There's no Google or Reddit to aggregate all the content; you need to know where to look. That's exciting and fun (although stumbling on illegal content isn't ):...). Feels almost like a game, with the whole idea of discovering hidden content in dark corners. I think what happened to the internet in the past decade or so could be described as gentrification. The "discovery" period began to fade, and we started cleaning up, resulting in the "suburban internet," as posted above. I feel like oftentimes this can be compared to the process of gentrifying a sleazy area in a city: early adopters move in and make interesting things, causing more people to come and try to participate. As more people move in, the early adopters are crowded/priced out, and the things that made the place interesting begin to fade out in favor of more bland/easily accessible things... Just some food for thought.