I dropped off the internet while I was in the military and deployed, the answer is yes.
That said, I'd like to turn this on its head. It's normal for friends to go out of touch, reconnect in somewhat of a cycle. Some people stay constantly in touch, but not everyone. That isn't normal, and to be quite honest, would be super stressful for me. It's like juggling a dozen hot plates with pancakes being formed on them. You're eventually going to burn one or let it all burn spectacularly. My conclusion was that losing touch with a lot of my high school and college friends wasn't historically abnormal - staying in touch with them forever was.
It's also normal to have different depths of friendships. Not everyone needs to hear your deepest inner thoughts. This kind of summarizes what I think is wrong with social media.
Internet culture and it's subcultures are weird. That's to say, though, that any deeply entrenched culture is kinda weird. They have their own language, memes, attitudes, etc formed and influenced by the adjacency of it's members. That's to say, I look at sports people the way this person looks at the weird assortment they followed to a ketamine party. If you're going to a giant parking lot, ripping your shirt off, screaming, getting black out drunk, screaming at players, devoting precious memory to niche sports and player statistics - are you not mechanically the same as these folks? The difference being that your community is physical.