Yeah, I'm of the same vintage. Never really felt eternal september impacted the newsgroups I frequented as they didn't appeal to AOLers, and felt it was exaggerated. But it feels real now with engagement metric following content creators and influencers, and the way platforms enable it now.
The original eternal September[1] predates my entry to the internet by a couple of years, but the cycle repeats eternally.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September