yeah look at all the wonderful things they created. ahead of its time? anonymous message boards existed way before them and freenet, as close as possible to true anonymity started way before.
It was also raw as fuck. That allowed for some very honest interactions but also introduced a shitload of trash to filter through. Then the whole political influx came in a decade ago and fully ruined it. lemmy seems like a good middle way. no senseless karma farming but also some tools to moderate.
It's pretty much dead to me. I know it was always ass but at some point the OC/spam ratio gets too bad to bother. Lost memes were a good time. Now I'd have to sift through 80 incels calling eachother tranny to find a single post with a shred of an original thought behind it. Eh, maybe it's the same and I just got too old for it. Doesn't matter in the end.