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The significance is that face-to-face interaction with a physically limited local group within a greater culture is more socially grounding, and less often results in the crazy person being socially rewarded for crazy beliefs. But as we increasingly virtualize our social groups, those people find social rewards easily by searching out crazy groups with almost no effort. The normal group can't apply any social pressure to the crazy person once he's free to roam the Internet.
My mistake was in thinking that people would generally prefer physical interaction (that seeing, hearing, feeling people in person was greatly preferable to our senses), like in the early MySpace days, when it was commonly understood to be kind of a harmless joke and it didn't seem like it was threatening our entire social order. But the truth is that people can lead socially fulfilling lives online now (with some nasty side effects but the system works). And if that's true, that virtual relationships are fulfilling enough, then there is no chance that the crazies can be kept in the fold.
Ahhh, interesting and well put.