I got on the 'Net in 1993. The Web was very "meh". A lot of tutorials on how to write HTML, very little useful content yet. IRC and Usenet were where the action was.
I remember that. I had almost zero interest in www until geocities came along and then …it was something else to compose and publish a “website”
The whole thing was atrocious but at least introduced me to the concept.
In fact, I had to spend like three days downloading Netscape to try it out because I didn’t even have a graphical browser yet.
Wired Magazine famously agreed with you. Usenet was where it was at then.
Internet commercialization wasn't really on until 1994. Then anyone could get dial-up IP, they could put ads on their webpages, and etc.