Something has definitely changed though, the internet communities of the past used to be very VERY tight-knit.
There just wasn't that many of us, so you'd talk to people unlike you. I knew my bbs friends all by their first and last names, had photos of them, would talk to the better ones on the phone, they were some of my best friends despite them usually being completely different from myself.
These days, I don't know a single person on the internet, and I rarely interact with people on the internet who are different from me, so I never get into the depth of conversation I once did. That's something lost.
The internet used to be like a dive-bar in an ivy-league college town, full of geniuses and weirdo townies. These days it's more like the city of New York -- no one knows you, and no one cares to.