[tshaddox]

I think it's trending that way, but there are still going to be niche interest groups where you're almost certainly not going to have enough other members in your geographic vicinity to have in-person meetings. In the 1990s if you lived in a 10,000 person town you'd be lucky to find 4 other people in your age group with such niche interests as, say, personal computers or video games. Obviously those two things are quite widespread now, but there are new things that are just as niche as those once were.

[strken]

I lived near a town of less than 2000 in the 90s and there were a lot more than 4 people in my age group who played video games. I had four kids in my class who were into computers enough to reinstall Windows, set up networks, and swap ISA/AGP/PCI cards with each other. I lived near a bigger "city" of 30,000 that had swap-meets and 200 person LAN parties, though I think they might have only gotten 50 or 60 participants in the mid-90s.

Might have been different for different age groups though.