It was one of the few places (along with Angelfire) anyone could get a free web page those days, and the most interesting thing you could do with web design was add a background and some animated GIFs.
MySpace in the mid-2000s had a very similar vibe. It's just normal people doing fun stuff when there are few constraints or guidelines.
I remember angelfire, only because of the banner that was forced on every free site. And I think those sites loaded popups in the background. This was probably back before tracking existed and was just used to pump various dotcom business traffic statistics.
There was one brief moment in time when pop up windows were generally seen as shady thing. Now they are back on most sites. Just not as separate window.
MySpace in the mid-2000s had a very similar vibe. It's just normal people doing fun stuff when there are few constraints or guidelines.