This site has the vaporwave neon and the intentionally shitty gifs (like the Under Construction one that used to be the landing page). The website for r/SubredditDrama is intentionally disastrous (it’s rdrama.net, but be warned it’s even more full of brainworms than the subreddit). A lot of sites will use chan or PhpBb boards. Even the plug-and-play Reddit alternatives have universally opted for the “old” Reddit style combined with whatever nightmarishly boomer custom CSS their ancestor community used to have.
Maybe this point seems obvious, but I think there’s probably more to it than “current Internet sucks and the old internet looks good by comparison”
People who create new designs don't give a shit if the designs are better. They just make change for the sake of change.
Because what would happen if things were OK the way they were? They'd be out of a job, that's what.
If you ever wondered why your favorite app that worked just fine suddenly got changed into unusable garbage, that's why.