The old internet isn't coming back

"The Old Internet" sounds to me much like people who love vinyl. What I hear on it is scratchy, compressed, and hard to use. But it's "better" in some way that appeals to them -- and only to them.

Which is fine. But I sure don't miss the Internet which was small, ugly, and full of stupid. Now it's large, ugly, and full of stupid -- but there's so much more "large" that I can always find lots of things that I want.

It feels like somebody's in-joke. I wasn't in on that in-joke, and don't particularly want to be. To me, the early Internet was exciting largely for the things that panned out: universal access to everything and everyone in an instant. If what you want is memes, there are plenty of them still there. If you don't get them -- that's kind of the point of an in-joke.

The old internet never went away.

I can, to this day, setup a server and host mail, webpages, etc. by myself if I want to.