>The Internet ... should have had no bearing on our actual day-to-day living experience.

Replace "The Internet" with previous communications technology and maybe that will demonstrate how completely unrealistic that sounds. Television should have had no bearing on our day-to-day existence? Phones? Radio?

I guess you can arbitrarily draw the line at the Internet, sort of like the Amish did with electricity. But it seems arbitrary to me.

The moral of every sci-fi story is that technology is morally neutral and it's how you use it that matters. Why would The Internet be different?

BBSes had absolutely no bearing on my day to day existence. No one had a job working at Big BBS and there was not a constant drumbeat of hustle culture strugglebussing surrounding the idea of using a modem to post messages.

This was the ideal final form of the internet and we lost it forever. Now, we have sludge.