> There are more sites like this one today, by at least an order of magnitude, than existed in the early lift-off days of the Web
There are probably 3 orders of magnitude more crap though, so the good stuff is harder to find. And the random fun stuff doesn't bother with SEO so it's easy to feel like the internet is full of more crap, because it is. In the early days people were building websites for fun, nowadays people are doing it for money (or marketing, or they feel obligated to have a LinkedIn even if they hate it, or whatever - nobody used to feel obligated to use the internet). Sure, there are still some gems, but they're drowned out by turds.
The early days are more fun because true believers are building something they really care about, by the time something becomes mainstream it's already generic.
Your point about music doesn't apply because music has existed for millenia. The internet has existed for decades.
There are probably 3 orders of magnitude more crap though, so the good stuff is harder to find. And the random fun stuff doesn't bother with SEO so it's easy to feel like the internet is full of more crap, because it is. In the early days people were building websites for fun, nowadays people are doing it for money (or marketing, or they feel obligated to have a LinkedIn even if they hate it, or whatever - nobody used to feel obligated to use the internet). Sure, there are still some gems, but they're drowned out by turds.
The early days are more fun because true believers are building something they really care about, by the time something becomes mainstream it's already generic.
Your point about music doesn't apply because music has existed for millenia. The internet has existed for decades.