This seems to ignore the fact that millions of non-technical people did pay cash for a product: AOL. And in fact the AOL buyout of Time Warner coincided almost exactly with burst of the dot com boom.
That may be the case but the idea that non-technical people didn't pay cash for internet products before the dot com boom is fanciful. I would say AOL's acquisition of a legacy media company did signal the peak of a mania the way these IPOs are.
To be clear, there is a world of difference between IPOs and LBOs. In the risk they create. And in the risk they signal.