The big appeal for me was it had a lot of people of various fandoms and it was a cool way to discuss & share content related to those. I joined way back when the last harry potter movies were coming out and it filled a gap for me after I left NF. It was a cool place to post fanfics, fanart, edits (gifs, screenshots, etc.) and the community was /generally/ positive which I always liked.
Basically it was a great way to waste time while exploring fandoms that I liked and it always had super up to date news in regards to upcoming shows and movies and such.
Nowadays there are far less people though (and that’s not just because of the ban…people were leaving before that) but I will browse occasionally :surprised