Why has the Internet died? Is there some sort of new Internet that I’ve missed?

I send e-mails to mailing lists. No reply for weeks upon weeks. Dead.

I ask questions on Stack Exchange. No replies. Ignored. Just trolls and toxic people left.

I left freenode because every room was a ghost town in the last few years.

Every search query results in irrelevant garbage and/or eternal reCAPTCHAs.

Fake sites, registration forms that don't do anything, "phone verification", "upload photo id to load page", etc.

The "dark web" doesn't seem to actually exist at all. I do have Tor browser installed but there are no .onions to visit either.

Nothing seems to work. Nothing (worthwhile) seems to be used at all.

I've looked all over for some sort of "new Usenet", but there is no such thing. All those decentralized projects are minimal and have zero users, in perpetuity.

I feel like I'm going insane. What has happened? How can there be far less activity on the Internet today than it was 30 years ago? How is that logically possible?

I might as well be offline completely. I basically feel like I am.