Prior to 2010, I met A LOT of people IRL that I had previously only interacted with on forums, IRC channels, and what not. I guess that was the exciting part, t

Prior to 2010, I met A LOT of people IRL that I had previously only interacted with on forums, IRC channels, and what not. I guess that was the exciting part, to see what kind of people they were IRL, as you only had their internet persona and nickname to go after. We'd meet up at a bar, pizza place, etc. in groups and just shoot the shit. Hell, my roommate at the time got a visitor from the other side of the world, and they'd only been discussing stuff on some (niche) hobby chatroom. I haven't really met too many like that in the past 10-12 years though. Many forums moved over to become Facebook groups/pages, and the excitement is kind of gone.