Yeah, I was socially isolating myself online WAY before facebook!
I see now: /r9k/ posters were internet hipsters, creating reality-distorting bubbles of isolation and despair around themselves before it was cool.
I managed that before r9k debuted... and I'm still socially bankrupt. There is no escape.
Exactly. You can keep going back and it was always happening on the Internet. I was doing this on various forums before 4Chan was a thing. People were doing it nearly a decade before I was born, on BBSes in the late 70s.
It just steadily became more common. Turns out replacing real in person socializing with digital distraction is just not a good idea/
The future was already there. It just wasn't evenly distributed yet.