Isn't Substack.com like the old "blogosphere" and hence like the old internet? There certainly are many quirky people publishing on Substack who are writing, creating and talking (via video and podcast) about anything and everything. I myself publish essays about the life lessons found in movies, and I'm creating a four-panel comic strip on Substack. Others are putting up original music, poetry, fiction etc. And of course there are many technical Substacks, covering economics, politics, research, etc. Many of these are large enough to have their own communities. Can't you get what you liked from "the old internet" on Substack?
znpy|3 years ago
No.
The old blogosphere would be stuff like wordpress.com or blogger... which mostly are still there.
Also tumblr (now with 100% less porn) and the now defunct myspace.
I know some people that got into web development just because they wanted to customize their homepages on tumblr/myspace.
But nowadays people get on twitter/facebook and all they get is the same shade of blue, same as everybody else.
EDIT: before that there were websites that would give away free hosting space... Like 100MB or something like that.