Completely agree b_b, I don't think digital communities are surrogates for physical communities. However, I do feel that digital communities allow me to connect with more people and make friendships that I would otherwise never have made. And the key is in the point you brought up about being more approachable in an online community. I could never well be sitting in a coffee shop with people that I would get along with, but it would be socially inappropriate for me to approach them and find out. I think this has something to do with our current mismatch between the social system we evolved in and our current social system. For most of our history we lived in bands of 200 individuals and we knew everyone. In that world talking to someone you didn't know would actually have been dangerous. Now of course that isn't the case but we still behave as if it is. Digital communities may be solving that problem. Long-term (50-100 years out), I can't help but think that digital communities will make our entire species one big band.