It’s soul vs soulless, not clunky vs robust. The modern Internet is arguably much more robust and secure, but the internet of yesteryear was actually pleasant to use, even if it was more prone to random crap going wrong. Each website had a unique look and feel, and things were less predatory. There wasn’t as much of an arms race between companies to control every second of your attention, because they don’t know yet how to harvest data generated by your usage meaningfully.