I think the proliferation of narratives about the early web reflects the lack of centralization. Everyone had a different view of it. You could kind of see it as early memes made their way around forums with different people thinking their forum came up with it, only to have someone with a wider view point out it came from somewhere else. If someone was hanging out with the startup crowd back then, the narrative web3 people go for might be the most plausible version to them.

There's an interesting modern case where a meme started on Mastodon, but then it popped up on Reddit and everyone seemed to have a different idea of which YouTuber/Twitter community/etc came up with it.

https://mastodon.social/@picklemaddierix/100639571254871391

https://old.reddit.com/r/teenagers/comments/bt9ww9/gender_is...

It might have been the first Mastodon meme to go viral on the wider internet.