(I'm going to abbreviate Internet Archive as "IA" because I say it so much.)
When I was a wee lad on the internet I didn't pay much attention to the Internet Archive. Everything I wanted was already readily available if I knew what to look for.
As I get older though, I have come to appreciate the Internet Archive much more. The internet has become more closed off. Websites and especially older videos and games have been lost to time. Streaming services have rotating, often exclusive libraries behind a paywall. Also the whole websites needing identification debacle which I could write a whole different journal entry for. Even IRL libraries are losing funding based on what books they have available, and have been on the decline for years simply due to less traffic.
Aside:
Most (USA) Libraries get funding from patron donations and through township boards. My local library lost funding from one of the townships it serves a few years ago, due to having LGBT books. Luckily a local celebrity donated and asked others to donate & the library was able to receive an astounding amount of donations from the public to keep running. Not all libraries are so fortunate :(
If it weren't for the Internet Archive, I would not have been able to watch MASH. I don't have a Hulu account and I could not find the show anywhere else in its original quality & without laugh tracks. If it weren't for the IA, my friend who lives in Eastern Europe would not have been able to read Frankenstein in English. Recently I've started to read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? through the Internet Archive's Open Library. I would not have been able to access it conveniently otherwise unless I requested it from my local library. (Please support your local libraries if you can, I have no form of transportation so it's not very easy for me to access it.)
The Internet Archive has everything you could think of. Missing an old computer game you played when you were a kid? Check out the Internet Archive's Software Collection, or its Internet Arcade. Want to watch something but it was only released on VHS? Look at the VHS Vault. (Plus, VHS tapes degrade very easily and only last 10-25 years. IA is great at preserving what will one day become lost media.) Can't afford to go to an art museum? IA has galleries from the Metropolitan. Researching something and want to find a news broadcast from that event? IA is likely to have it.
Speaking of news, major media outlets are blocking the preservation of news on the Internet Archive. Since February, NYT has told the IA to stop the Wayback Machine from saving their website. There is currently a petition running to keep news on the Wayback Machine.
The archive has thousands of user-curated and official collections and you can almost certainly find your niche on there. The preservation of media is so important, especially in the digital age where websites disappear and photographs can be deleted forever. (38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are no longer accessible) I've always been passionate about free access to the internet and information. So websites like Wikipedia and Internet Archive are quite special to me.
I've run out of steam and I'm not sure what else to say, but I just wanted to yap a little about how much I love this service. ^.^ My dream job is to become a librarian & I love old media so IA is like a playground for me.