More of a nerdy question than a sexy one, but:

I notice that a lot of the time when people talk about BDSM, they jump straight to talking about online relationships and communities as the norm. It seems like a lot of people are involved online and not at all in real life, and that a lot of those who have "IRL" relationships originally connected through the internet (my husband and I did, although we didn't start practicing BDSM until we were living together).

My question is, what was "the Scene" like before the internet? How was it different? Better? Worse? As a spoiled young'un (I'm 22 and first logged on at maybe 7 years old), it's hard for me to imagine anything without the all-important Series of Tubes.