We used to all have our nice own gardens. If anyone was happening by we might say hello, and invite them in.

It was easy to walk around your neighborhood, and find someone with a nice garden, who was having a garden party. You could present yourself by your handle (which was probably, or at least possibly globally unique), and join in, and maybe have fun at their garden party.

It was difficult to find gardens that you didn't care about.

When you found someone in the "gaming" garden, and then found them again in the "rally driving" garden (and you know they were the same person due to the nearly globally unique handle), it was fun and exciting.

Now there are a handful of giant gardens that I don't really want to go into for the most part. They're owned by old royalty, they're uncomfortable (for me), the only reason the garden owners want me to be there is so that they can make me look at ads, not appreciate the garden. Maybe my friends are there too, but all I see are people yelling about their small section of the (private) garden.

Sure I may still find my old friends in these weird giant gardens, but ben3212 is probably not my friend Ben who happens to have the favorite number 3212.

Hacker News is a relatively "smaller" community that is closer to the old internet.

Also the top streamer on tik tok / youtube shorts / ... are not likely posting here trying to get massive up votes on their content, as there aren't very many ways to monetize having the top post on hacker news, so while this interaction happened on the "current Internet" I know of one or two places like this on the current internet. I used to know of more, and I think I liked that better.

I know this isn't so different than "Also the clouds used to be different. They used to be whiter, and puffier! It was better then!", but here I am.