First place I ever heard that saying (which is obviously told in all kinds of contexts) was the initial period of fracking for natural gas here in w. PA. I went to a conference where nobody would use our services because a former boss thought we should just go to anything and see if somehow through Kevin Bacon's six degrees, we would meet someone later who would use ours....and that's what I remember from the conference. That fracking would improve things for everyone here. And though the people who pretty much hate anything fossil fuels wouldn't agree, boats were all lifted here - whether it was due to the decreased cost of gas, the revenue for people in areas where there wasn't much opportunity. Or the trade in of old coal plants in a valley that likes to hold still polluted air during inversions and not that fast moving other times - trading coal for gas has improved the air here quite a lot.
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I wonder of Sawmill Creek will tolerate link posting yet. Anyone who is around during the days of that forum in the late 2000s or early 2010s will find that humorous - the edit rate for posts was insane, and certainly links out were eliminated by the hawks concerned that people may be directed elsewhere "someone could go to a site that had a profane word on it and be offended".
One thing to recall that I rarely think about, though, is a lot of the older folks I knew never really got good at learning what to feed a search engine, and operated entirely on a system of bookmarks. If a site's page structure or front page changed address-wise, they would cease to visit. Data analytics and critical squinting by advertisers appears to have killed the idea that advertising over and over to the same long-term audience is a good idea.
All of the conglomerates acquiring old activity sites now appear to be seeing if they can get cash out of the current users with a poverty tale, but the real value of the site is in feeding the content to google to hit unique hits from a search engine with more advertisements than anyone could've dreamed of before they figure out that their nail polish remover damaged table won't be fixable by them. Or whatever other substituted content would apply the same way given whatever the hobby is.
I have run into that with routine car issues - google sends you to a forum, the forum mentions the problem you have (stinky air conditioner condenser or whatever), a discussion ensues on a forum, and quite often all of the answers given are unusable. But you have already seen the ads by then and realize you thought you were seeking the site, but the site was really seeking you.
