That was the era before bots and normies made up the majority of the accounts, and before social media was weaponized.

It was the same for reddit, and honestly even 4chan in the early 2000s.

Hacker news kinda fills that gap now.

Some people I seriously admired followed me on there (maybe they still do, I don't use it now), like legendary game devs, authors, musicians... and I could have candid conversations/exchanges with them. That was awesome. I'll forever appreciate the awesome moments, conversations and even opportunities that arose from that site. :)

Happens all the time in Lemmy