I think xda is magical that it is still around and a resource to find out stuff about a specific phone. Then other forums like avsforum that's kept popping up to help me when I had TV model specific questions throughout the years. Overclockers.net for specific motherboard discussions that have continued to be a resource over the years.

Deal sites like isthereanydeal, camelcamelcamel, and pcpartpicker continues be so useful as it has been in the past. Then there's pcgamingwiki I use all the time. Oh Wikipedia of course. Even steam forums has been useful with guides there for games, and even sometimes people asking about troubleshooting for console versions because the devs are there.

I think there's a lot of wonderful places. If you look at the most popular billion dollar run social media services with massive amount of users then yeah it start to seem bleak. But, there's still places that were cool and are still cool because they exist with a more sustainable model as opposed to infinite growth.

Also forgot to add that something like archive sites exists is incredible too, so sites that will be lost will have more of a chance to not have content lost forever and be a glimpse into the past.

Where are these magical “right” places?

It's a subjective matter. I'm not you, I can't say what brings you joy and motivates you positively.

Say, Mastodon, Reddit, Youtube any other social site. Pursuing the topic of politics alone is going to push your mental balance towards negativity, pesimism, cynicism and possibly depression. Skip it, limit it, and if you can't resign from it, then balance it out with pics of funny things, jokes, possibly a community dedicated to some interesting project or hobby.

Today alone (...)

The fact that such an experience managed to frustrate you is a strong indicator that you could use a bit more organized approach to the online content.