The Internet has become Stale

Another HN user recently offered a term for this: Glossification.

It's not just the internet that has gone through this, any endeavor that involves an audience will undergo a commercialization optimization process which will erode the essence of what was enjoyable to uncover what is functional. Many meaningful questions can be asked about this, all beginning with 'why'.

You can still find pieces of amateur enthusiasm in various niches hidden in corners unsearchable, almost a self-protective mechanism naturally evolved to keep what little remains for people to enjoy from the eroding process.

New internets have been formed, and the same stuff you knew and loved about earlier internets are present there. But it feels smaller & lonelier - because you've become accustomed to the firehose. You'll have to go through a sort of Matrixical unplugging to find them, however. Unplugging is the new turning on.