You explored it. That's it. Turns out there's less of it than you imagined. There are, of course, plenty of sites that you could visit. Most of them will be incredibly boring. Years ago you found that interesting just because it was all new, but you don't any more because you've seen similar things already. I suspect that most of those "5 to 6 sites" are aggregators like Hacker News where people seek out new stuff (o…
I think this is half the explanation. The other half is that people stopped making cool internet things just out of the passion and craft of it. Now everything on the internet is "content," a hyper optimized form of human intellectual output that is devoid of art, minimal on information, excreted instead of created, measured to the lowest common denominator, monetized yet worthless, just enough bait on the hook for the next lizard brain click. And we ourselves have changed, trapped in this giant skinner box, too hooked on the next dopamine hit to dig deeper for our novelty. Even professional journalism is quite dead and with it went our collective consensus reality; instead we are left in a house of mirrors looking at endless reflections of special interest talking points. The world is an incredibly interesting place, but none of that makes it to the internet anymore.
In the meantime, go read an old gem, seat61.com and reflect on what we have all lost.