>>4,5There is some truth to that, i was "very online" back in early 2000's but there was that feeling its all built on mass roleplaying - the wasn't a common consensus reality, it was more like "shared escapism"(internet was mainly geeks and nerds).
Now reality and the "online" merged thanks to normies and social media, about 2008-2010 people started bring their lives into online space - real names, real issues and social drama of normiesphere - politics/religion/etc. Internet soon became very centralized and heavy-commercially oriented, people were viewed as statistics and mass audiences were desired instead of niche communities(Reddit/Facebook/MySpace/Digg).