In my experience most people who joined a BBS didn't have any problems with email or IM, but at that time most didn't have access to either of those things outs

In my experience most people who joined a BBS didn't have any problems with email or IM, but at that time most didn't have access to either of those things outside of the BBS systems they used. Even people who had internet access back then used BBSs to communicate with people near them on topics that were either local or which generally interested them. Most boards had spaces which allowed general discussion of anything, even if the BBS was created with a specific subject in mind (computers, warez, occult stuff, photography, etc). Lots of the people I saw at meetups were a bit on the shy/awkward side, which wasn't too uncommon for people who were into computers in general those days, but they were able to get along fine at meetups because they already knew many (if not most) of the other people there. They'd spent hours talking, and debating, and sharing ideas with them. They could go to a meetup and talk about all the same things they talked about online and they already had some idea of how people would react to them. A local BBS was a great place to meet friends because it gave people a safe space to get to know each other at their own pace with carefully chosen words before being forced into real-time face to face interaction, and once they already had relationships established the transition to hanging out in real life was made much easier.