Same age, but I didn't really get into online communities until the early noughties. I got into programming working with a gaming community to build out their w

Same age, but I didn't really get into online communities until the early noughties. I got into programming working with a gaming community to build out their website (building phpBB themes and mods) and building a matching service, and then it went from there... There was definately a lot of toxicity in that community though (even though we had maybe 20 regular members), so I think you were lucky :)