The original meaning of the word as I first heard it back in the late 1990s was to refer to the vast majority of “normal” people who don’t have an interest in or deep understanding of technology and internet culture.

that’s still my understanding of normie today. a normie nowadays is the average person who uses soulless platforms like tiktok, insta, etc which are controlled by big tech companies and exist for the sole purpose of making money. they don’t know about the golden age of the internet when you cared about the content you made and not about likes. but now since the normies discovered the internet everything has to generate as much profit as possible