that doesn't mean it's defined by that decision, or even that it made that decision in the first place - the majority have decided it for them. and you're letting the majority define it for you, whether it's even remotely accurate or not.
indie web generally wants personal control and ownership. that isn't cynicism or "pre web-2.0" or counter-culture-as-self-identity, it's personal control and ownership. almost everyone wants that. the fact that the majority have given it up doesn't make them cynical, if anything it makes the mega-corps denying those things cynical.
Think of a great jazz saxophonist in 2025. Practicing sax every day for years. Is he living in the past because jazz isn't popular like it once was? To some degree, sure, because his inspiration and source material is probably 60- and 80-year-old recordings. But is he cynical for appreciating craft, improvisation and organic individual expression over convenient digital production? And how should he advance his values? By trying to convert Taylor Swift into a jazz saxophonist? That's never going to happen. And it's not cynical to think so, it's just obvious. (Edit: To some degree it might even be wrong, because she would have to deny her inherent Taylorness.) No, the way he can advance those values is by living them himself. Which is the epitome of non-cynical, really. If there are enough of him out there, it'll be a movement, but popularity isn't necessary for it to be part of the present and future, especially his own present and future.
Yes, and no. I think a problem is critique in the form of action. There are movements such as the indie web (e.g. Neocities, Nekoweb, Agoraroad) that long for the old web in their nostalgia and form a counter-movement to the current state of the web. The websites and communities that emerge from this are more or less an imitation of the websites of the late 90s and early 2000s. My problem with this is that the indie web primarily defines itself by simply being the opposite of the web 2.0. It exists primarily as a counterculture, in which “counter” is more important part than "culture". This movement is cynical in that a better future for the internet and the web no longer seems possible, and the only way out is to escape into a nostalgically romanticized past. For me, this is more of a confirmation of the Dead Internet Theory than of the Alive Internet Theory.