They weren't people with very different values. In general, they were our friends and neighbors who hadn't figured out how to use a web browser yet.
The apart-ness that some original netizens imagined for themselves was always fantasy and, I would argue, destructive fantasy when it crossed over to belief in personal elitism. Is being online to the exclusion of real world relationships with those physically adjacent to us building a new, better culture, or the digital equivalent of hiding out in the woods?