You were excited to get email because it was almost always from a human being who put meaning and intent into their message. It was like getting a handwritten letter compared to all the random terms of service update emails from a service you haven't used in four years and emails from a service you didn't sign up for because someone else thinks your email address is their email address and the outright spam in the filter.

Now everything is stuck in corporate silos and largely out of reach.

I miss the somewhat more decentralized and anonymous nature of the early Internet and the Web. People were more likely to have their own Web site with their own shitty personal flare. Services were more infrastructure than ways to monetize the masses. Everyone was busy learning and trying out new things instead of just mindless content consumption or broadcasting their basic-assed opinion.

Things seemed more substantial. But also anonymity granted people the ability to not be judged by their failures. So trying things was less personally risky and easier to fade away in time.

Maybe I just got old. I would love to get back there, though.

Lmao me too, a stats counter with like 13 visits

15 of those were me