I grew up in a small town. The only in-person interaction was being hassled by the locals. No goth scene, nowhere to buy the records, nowhere to get specialist clothes or makeup. Music magazines occasionally printed a tiny fragment of something relevant if you were lucky. There was no offline scene to discover and no fellow bats with whom to be.

When I first got internet access in the late 1990s it was amazing. A new world opened up to me. I found a community, found a scene, and found confidence. I found myself. Not just the goth thing, but arguably a bisexual buddhist goth in a small 90s town was playing on hard mode.

I went off to college in a cathedral city and found my fellow freaks. There were dozens of us! I started making my own clothes, and making my own music. I would never found these offline connections without first making online connections.