It existed and still exists though, it's just that there is less incentive to produce this kind of content and leave it open. It's a natural result of how the system changes as people learn to game it and find ways to gain power or make it profitable.

There are modern websites that still bring those feelings to me. For example, this blog has impressed me with its content and creative visualizations: https://ciechanow.ski/ Personal websites and web forums just don't surface anymore when searching the web or browsing large communities/aggregators, but I can find them on places such as https://curlie.org/ (A modern-day web directory) and https://search.marginalia.nu/ (a search engine that focus on non-commercial websites).