As someone who is even older and has seen these types of threads, I can say with some confidence that this is called nostalgia (phpBB was never good). Not to say the internet is not ripe for another decentralization of power. Lack of patience is an issue.

Going back farther, it would be easy to feel nostalgic about the BBS scene.

There were less people and it had a higher barrier for entry, so better signal/noise.

Now there's everyone and it's easy to participate, and the noise is defenning.

smaller subreddit = less noise