Ah, hello! I have a rough idea of where you are, then. I'm in Fort Worth myself.

I agree with what you're saying. For me, I was vaguely aware that people who liked things sometimes got together, and I even went to a Star Trek convention when I was in junior high because I loved TNG and Patrick Stewart was one of the guests (he did a reading from Shakespeare and was brilliant, by the way), but I didn't get deeper into fandom than that and had no idea that this sort of thing existed outside of Star Trek fans. And then I got into high school and college and got busy with other things, and without the Internet it would never have occurred to me that there might be other people who watched this T.V. show about a teenage vampire slayer every week like I did, and who might want to discuss it too. I don't even know where I would have gone to find them in RL, and being a naturally shy person I probably wouldn't have tried. The Internet provided a safe space to interact for me, and an easy way to find communities of similar interest that I probably would not have found in RL, even though several of the friends I've made through fandom do live near me. And then you can see my comment to klangley56 above re: the Internet and its impact on my current fandom, which I would have never have even found without the Internet.