I grew up in a rural part of the United States. First got online in 1996 when I was 8 years old. The best thing that the Internet gave me was a way to talk to strangers from around the world and make friends with people who I would have never had a chance to interact with in person. In my 20s, it lead to real life friendships with people I had met online, which is really cool. I have used Couch Surfing to make friend…
I also grew up in a rural town, in Norway. I think internet made me more of a "world citizen", empathic to all kinds of people, than I would have been without. A small town can be quite unwelcome to those not like us. But I wonder if some of that is lost now to those being "raised on the internet"? That things are too big. There were small forums, behave, as you know the avatars of everyone and they become your frien…
Yes. Leaving a small town IRL to visit a more appropriate small digital town where people share interests but might be from anywhere was exactly what everyone I knew on early internet bbs/irc/mud was doing, basically. Presumably if you were in a larger city, you could already find people IRL with your interests somehow, even if the interests were obscure. Identity was anonymous but persistent and it was still a small town, so you couldn’t just be an ass all the time or you’d be ostracized.