I was going down memory lane, I graduated in 96. But Internet culture of the mid 2000s to mid 2015. Seemed like there was always some stand out video or event ranging from chocolate rain video, nyan cat, amazing horse, I like turtles, why does the Internet seem so stale lately? I just realized a lot of this fun stuff stopped around 2014 or became less prevalent the closer we get to events that started dividing us, like gamergate, Trump canidancy in 2015. God this last decade has just sucked and it just keeps getting worse. How did we go to so much hope and promise to where we are now? Even reddit sucks now
All the good stuff still exists (and there is more of it, in fact). But it is no longer the mainstream. The popular discourse is always around what is happening on the major platforms, but there is constantly great creativity happening over at Neocities and MakerTube, just to name a couple platforms. Hell, even YouTube and TikTok have amazing stuff happening on them. It’s just not the top-viewed content.
One of the best things you can do is stop using algorithmic recommendations for a few weeks. Download the Unhook plugin for YouTube, etc. Then you actually choose the internet media you are exploring.