I was around at the time, and webrings were useless from the start. Mailing lists, usenet and IRC were fine but they were just as viciously combative and abusive as any social media we have now. You're looking at the past with rose-tinted glasses.

You might also be forgetting that Google first became big because they created a search engine that actually worked. Getting Altavista or Lycos to find what you were looking for was a real skill.