I get the nostalgia but not the sentiment. You can still set up a website, you can still post content on it, you can still link to that content on social media to get viewers, if you attach Google Analytics to your site, that traffic then improves your search rankings which brings you more traffic.
Hundreds of people a day read my rantings (and I probably owe most of them an apology for that) but the point is you can still make a 'personal' website and grow an audience even now, you don't need an 'alternative' web to do that, you just need to put in the effort.