A subculture is more similar in scale to human societies during the majority of those 100s of thousands of years of evolution than to the mega/giga scale of modern society.
Yes. But the subculture in TFA is about people staying at home, and only/mostly human connection with the subculture online (and few/nobody else).
It's about what else you do.
"Normies" still have (or some have) the evolutionary human IRL connection (meetings in meetspace, touching, partners and friends they see face to face, etc).
The subcultures as described in TFA (and what I'm saying might not be the best for them) is lacking that.
That is, the subject is about persons shut-in, with no IRL contact, and connected through the web to some subculture(s). A hikikomori like existence.
Not about some everyday person that is fan of medieval bard songs, and aside their regular meatspace partners, friends, spouses, acquaintainces, etc. also frequent some forums.
Let's put it another way: "Rare people connect online because they are geographically separated" puts the cart before the horse. Connecting online is not the problem (as I see it). Not connecting offline as well is.
And the idea of "a rare person", whose criterium for connecting to someone else is them being part of the same subculture is part of the issue.
>And the idea of "a rare person", whose criterium for connecting to someone else is them being part of the same subculture is part of the issue.
In my experience subcultured people have more permissive criteria for connections, and mainstream people want to kill all nonconformance with fire.