Now there are entire subreddits full of it.

It's not the same.

Old internet was conspiratorial and fascinating, like being in an alien a zoo. People were nuts; I'd want to have an IRL beer with them but not tell them where I live. Imageboards and such like that still exist, of course, but its mostly out of sight I guess.

I just flipped through an imageboard pursuing something else and got a taste of that. Like, 5GB zips full of crazy documents and rants, a literal Hitler worshipping /pol mod, but you can see the nuggets of truth they're orbiting around.

Reddit and especially Twitter isn't the same. It's feels like all the users are manipulated into groupthink and (I refuse to have this term robbed from me) virtue signaling, especially when not anonymous. There's nothing interesting if you dig; just some poor sap parroting professional influencers in their engagement algorithm bubble, nothing about whatever life crises sucked them in, nor the sheer manpower they put into building their little internet frontpage.

And to be blunt, Lemmy is nice, but also feels this way sometimes.