Slight quibble: that flex culture you and the parent discuss, embodied by going for 99s/200ms pre-skillcapes, definitely existed; you just weren't privy to it. Places like the tip.it forums were full of flex - remember those autogenerated stats signatures? - but that was its own little niche, not the dominant culture. You're probably right that social media amplified that dynamic a lot, but people like Zarfot and clans like DivinationX[0] were all about no xp waste well before that ethos hit the mainstream. It came from somewhere, rather than appearing fully formed from a seashell.

I think you both have good points around how a monoculture makes the game less rich and more theme-park-MMO-ish. I always felt that one of the things that helped it feel a bit more like a world simulator and a bit less like a game was the diversity of ways in which people interacted with the game. Wanna be the guy who only farms herbs? Knock yourself out, the game won't stop you and make you go save the world or whatever. When everyone has the same goal (which when I still played I thought of as the slayer-ironman industrial complex rather than no xp waste) you lose that and are back to the inherent absurdity of 50 million different Chosen Ones. It's just a little ironic that in a "no wrong way to play, do it for fun" kind of take you're calling out a wrong way to play.

Disclaimer: obviously very biased; multiply maxed

[0] I wanna say '06 but can't find forum archives and the swiftirc timestamps got reset at some point