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user-inactivated  ·  3144 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Stephen Fry's Blog post on Social Media.

I entered The WELL as a militant Catholic and left two years later a militant atheist. The name I used back then is best left in the dank memes of history.

    Couldn't stand it when AOL let all the "spectators" in.

Yea, and that is what Fry is sort of trying to get at. Small communities that are hard to get into, hobbies that demand skill and dedication to enjoy, art/music/movie genre's that require an investment to enjoy, those are the best communities to be a part of. Everyone on the web page or in the community has that one thing, at least, in common and from that point you can build online friendships. The WELL was hard to get into, and the people in there were all nerds, dorks, geeks, outcasts, etc. That "otherness" bound people together. I doubt I'd have left religion if it was not for meeting people there while talking about space and science.

Edit: reading that back at myself made me chuckle in light of KB's Hipster Hate thread being bumped up again.