They absolutely are, but I think that link demonstrates the difference I was poorly describing quite well actually, the front page was diverse then too - by design - but how many of those links are sharing things at someones expense in the r/trashy sense? Not to put the content of that link on some sort of pedistal, but how many of those links would make it to the frontpage today?
It's a differnet site today than then, but if it were current that type of content is still broadly more interesting to me than the present frontpage. Having a read of some of the comment threads too it's really quite different to today, Sure there were in-jokes but it was more than same tired memes getting voted to the top time after time.