It was also a lot of work, and visions of “success” were different. On the work side, creators had to work to produce the content, but consumers had to work harder to find it. I had a physical “yellow pages of the internet” book in the mid 90s. You’d look up the subject then go to a site and surf around till you found what you were looking for (or not.)
The expectations were also different, especially for creators. If you put content up and got 100 page hits that was really cool. 10,000 was amazing. Reaching an audience that big would have required pre-internet would have required formally publishing something, which wasn’t easy. The sheer novelty of being a “normal” person and connecting with / influencing 100 or 10,000 strangers was a huge selling point.
I think the massive scale and reach of the biggest properties/stars has devalued the type of content creation the author talks about in the eyes of the creators. It’s just harder to get excited about 100 or even 1000 page views when you know people are getting millions or billions, and when your low quality Facebook post can get 100s of likes.
I really miss the old internet, but I also know I don’t have the time or capacity to consistently go back to the old “surfing” metaphor- search is too good and convenient, and I don’t think others are going to be willing to pour their time and souls into passion projects like they used to. Perhaps it’ll be a new frontier (VR?) that captures that sense of newness and whimsy next.