I was just thinking about this.
I'm also old, having gotten into the internet back in the BBS days in the late 80s and early 90s. Lemmy is the first platform I've been on that resurrected those feelings of friendly competition, community, and variety. In those days, each BBS had its own character. There was plenty of duplication of content, but it didn't matter because each server you connected to was like looking at that content through a different lens. Users didn't get notoriety from collecting upvotes; they got it by being willing to travel to different servers and make a name for themselves by participating in many communities.
It's good to have that feeling again!