I really think that Facebook messed the internet up. Not even the giant data hungry behemoth it is today, but its success at becoming “the place” really killed the small community aspect of the internet.

I remember in 2000-2001 being active in the yahoo chat rooms. I made friends there! As a 17-18 year old, I traveled hundreds of miles to meet people. I’m still friends with some of those people. I got into Neopets, joined a guild, and made friends in my guild - at least one of whom I’m social media friends with (and have met in real life - after our time on Neopets). Livejournal - same. But it shifted. Everything became big. Impersonal, just a way to get data.
The last time I had community on the internet was in 2016, when carrot chat was a thing on Reddit. A small community I belonged to spun one up, and the folks who joined liked chatting so much that after Carrot imploded, we spun up a Slack channel. Ironically, the Reddit community grew to a point where it felt less like Cheers and more like a beer kiosk at the stadium, but our little Slack group stayed close. It’s fallen off a bit in the intervening years, but I did meet my wife in that group, so no complaints.