I do find it interesting to think about; what kinda of people are attracted to spaces like this and why
If to speak about myself - I was born in a small settlement in Israel in 1995, my father who was a computer technician introduced me to PCs at a young age, which not only familiarized me with video games and the internet, but may have also contributed with my somewhat quicker grasp of the English language early on.
I grew up during what you may call the second anime boom of the early 2000s, when big and influential shows such as DBZ, Beyblade, Yugioh, Inuyasha, etc were airing on TV. I was (and still am) absolutely in love with them and was frequenting on old Israeli anime fansites and forums such as Isrataku, Anime-IL, various Tipo websites and other dedicated sites.
You can read about some of them in this following blog post. Pictures included. Hopefully it translates well into English!
Link.I became a very a technically oriented guy, very quickly, and was always that person to tech support with friends PCs issues and such. Studied Computer Science in high school too.
Never got into social media due to my introverted nature and simply not caring about sharing my life in depth with random people or friends. I slowly found myself opposing social media and the modern internet more and more as it grew into... whatever it is today. All the communities I used to participate in are long dead.
Then after years of searching online and typing random sentences into Google such as "I miss the old internet", I somehow stumbled upon Neocities, and then this forum!