Community, Cults, and Culture - Has technology played a role?

Community in the broad sense has been heavily influenced by the onset of technology and the web. Others have broadly defined the 'community' as a word, or taken its direct definition. We must consider the notion that arguably, a sense of community has diminished in the present day by the invention of the web, making users less likely to participate in human-to-human interactions and more likely to become solitary. However, I personally believe that the sense of "community" has been enhanced post-world wide web.

Let's further defend this point that community has grown since the invention of the world wide web. Sub cultures and niche communities have already established themselves at their corners of the internet. A student in his presentation mentioned Reddit, a huge "social networking" website where millions of users have already cemented into different "subreddits" featuring selective, and sometimes specific interests. Some sub-communities on Reddit have developed a cultist-like following, a fascinating phenomenon where if a user, for instance, states any point that goes against the status quo he or she will be argued aggressively against, or potentially removed from the community. Examples of these are prominent in controversial subreddits whereupon subscribers follow topics in an overzealous manner. Forums and discussion boards pertaining to other interests have stemmed substantially. A core fanbase of a certain following may branch off to different communities.

Moreover, a modern day-to-day internet user should identify the culture of different sites and communities. Mentioning "Youtube Comments" as a subculture the user quickly associates them with vile, and less than intelligent input in most cases. Imgur, an image hosting site, similar to Reddit, has a voting system for their comments, so usually the most humorous, or clever comments will be seen. Tumblr, a blogging site is identified as having a radical social justice views on feminism and tends to be very forward with the aforementioned standpoints. Many other websites can be mentioned, and a general idea of what culture pertains to which community is subjective, but one can quickly notice that not only has the internet established a community on its own, but enhanced it and established a sense of "community" encapsulating any interest a person may have more so than the world has seen before the internet.