Agreed. There are a lot of people complaining about how things used to be better. But not a lot of them succeeding in building better stuff that others actually want to use out of the handful that actually lift a finger to do anything at all (most don't). And in the end that's the only thing that makes a difference.

There is no "way the web was supposed to be used". It was all just improvised and messy and open ended. Just some browser developers going "Sure, let's add a blink tag. Why the fuck not. Enjoy!". The only intention for that was to make stuff blink obnoxiously. Javascript was just a thing that they bolted on around the same time.

The default state of the web in the nineties was unstyled, fugly, and obnoxious. Just as it is today. You give people any kind of tools and they'll abuse them. Nothing has actually changed that much. The web people pine for, never really existed. It's just their lost youth that they are pining for.