i think we need Cracked-style articles back. desperately. or like, a guy doing a weird thing and writing a piece on it. sites like those are declining faster than the glaciers.
being able to find random people's crappy html sites on search engines, despite not meeting the modern strict ranking criteria or being bloated with SEO
being able to read fun, and sometimes unique and interesting ideas on said crappy html sites
less DRM everywhere
less commercialization and people trying to sell you crap (not saying less ads specifically because pop-up ads were everywhere)
more people just sharing things for the sake of sharing even if it sucks
anonymity
just generally the more raw and people oriented feel and less of the corpo ridden EEE/data-sucking/cloud-for-everything/enshittification bullshit we have to deal with on a constant basis these years
The Flash games are what I actually miss the most, but all good points. My coworkers and I would pick a game from addictinggames.com every week and compete. No micro transactions, no intrusive ads, just mindless fun.