Online Niche Communities

One major benefit of subcultures is that they open up necessary space when the mainstream becomes too crowded. Now, thanks to the internet, everything is supposedly a subculture—the mainstream has supposedly broken into a thousand fragments. One would assume this creates more room for everyone to spread out, literally and figuratively, but even

something I try to keep in mind when writing about online communities is that they’re (usually) filled with real, complex people. They’re not just weird introverts or shut-ins or people trying to escape reality.