Which I think signals a complete 180 from my lifetime.
Because, there was a time when being online was the counterculture. If you habituated newsgroups, IRC, BBSes, etc, you were on the fringe. Now, all of that is commonplace in some fashion. Newsgroups are basically places like this, reddit, even Facebook to some extent. IRC has its analogs in Discord, Slack, etc. BBSes are any online game community.
Because, there was a time when being online was the counterculture. If you habituated newsgroups, IRC, BBSes, etc, you were on the fringe. Now, all of that is commonplace in some fashion. Newsgroups are basically places like this, reddit, even Facebook to some extent. IRC has its analogs in Discord, Slack, etc. BBSes are any online game community.