The cohort immediately after you described - those geeks grew up along with growth of videogame market, IMs, and birth of multi-player gaming on the Internet. P

The cohort immediately after you described - those geeks grew up along with growth of videogame market, IMs, and birth of multi-player gaming on the Internet. People who were still geeks, and learned from all those academics and realname adults, but who also had to come up with nicknames early on, and got used to pseudonymity this way.