"forced to be simple" is one jackass away from a javascript engine to enable dynamic content because the inventor clearly could have had no reason to keep it simple.

As for everyone being irony poisoned, yeah probably. Smaller communities (10-20 max) are where you might actually make friends. But big public things with easy, wide reach give you masses of the irony poisoned, and masses of influencer wannabes sending you good vibes (subtext: send me zaps or likes).

For all the nasty things one can find about forum culture, it probably only got cancerous when the forum got big enough. At that point there's power and influence at play. Corruption of moderation, minor-e-celebdom, fame and notoriety. Once scarce resources, these are like cocaine for the psyche. Once constrained as a drug only the kings and princes might indulge, in the hands of the masses these petty tyrants are unworthy of their throne and they will destroy themselves, mad with so little power.

Small gated communities of close(ish) "friends," more like colleagues are the best that people have to offer one another. Dispassionate passion for a subject, or interest, minimizing egos while still forming bonds is what I think people should strive for. It isn't glamorous by design. Posting to the void is a form of that: a forum of one. Free expression of thought, it serves chiefly to clarify and concrete your own, for your own enlightenment.

/rant

Anyway yes, web 1.0 style things on services like gemini is likely the way forward that isn't something that will just inevitably become facebook/twitter/instagram again.