[jtuple]

TBH, its not even middle/high-school era Internet I miss most either. While I have fond mid-90s memories, I think peak Internet is somewhere in 2008-2012 range.

The Internet was mostly additive up to that point. New tech, sites, services existed alongside what came before.

I can appreciate Slashdot, Reddit, HN, and even Twitter (it was huge for distributed systems/database community ~2009-15) at different points in time.

It was really the photo-first, later video-first, shift that happened mid-2010s + big tech dominance that strangled old Internet. No longer being additive, but shrinking the Internet into fewer properties, with everything just being "content".