Ugh, I hadn't even thought about those huge images on mobile :/ It's bad enough on the desktop.

It was definitely difficult interacting with others unless one was lucky enough to already know a fellow fan of the same thing. I remember twice stumbling across fandom groups by chance -- one of the Monkees' albums had a reference to a fan organizer who I could contact. Another time I saw an ad for a fanzine in an entertainment mag and wrote away for it, which got me connected to various people. It's almost funny to think now how one would wait weeks for letters from fellow fans (and depending on the fan, the letters might not be worth the wait).