I also got Internet access in 1991, although I was quite a bit younger than you. Thanks to a family connection I was able to get SLIP dial-in access to the state university mainframe which had an Internet connection. I also got on Usenet, but utilized email and gopher a lot more than Usenet. I was, by most standards way too young to be on the Internet without direct focused supervision, but the Internet was new then and nobody thought anything of it, and so I would find people who were experts in various fields and email them my questions whenever I wanted to learn about something and I was often surprised by the friendly, thorough, and reasoned replies. Long before eBird and Merlin BirdID, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology had a gopher page with a contact address, and I emailed them all sorts of (probably dumb) questions about birds when I was a bored kid stuck on a farm in the Midwest running up the long distance bill, and they were always patient and answered my questions with all the seriousness they would provide to a colleague.

I really do feel like the Internet was a friendlier, more curious, and more intellectually focused place prior to Eternal September. I remember the shift well. While, like most people, I also enjoy video games and liked being able to play online with other people (first with MUDs and later with graphical games), once more "normal" people got Internet access there was a serious and deep regression to the mean, with a sudden commercial and entertainment focus. It was no longer about intellectual curiosity, hobbies, and finding like-minded people, it became a place dominated by commercial interests and driven by advertising.

By 2007, I was part of that commercial focus. I don't think anything of the old Internet remained after 2000, to be honest, and entering the 2008 financial crisis it heavily accelerated the commercialization. Most of the current things people are dissatisfied by online were in their beginnings but already extant by 2007 and the writing was already on the wall.