Heh, I never thought about the social aspect of it, really. I was a jock in a small town in CT. Hardcore ruled where I lived. I didn't like it. Hardcore was exactly what I was running from in my own head. I wanted less violence, less cliquey stuff (I'm not making this up, this really happened). Hardcore was anathema, but I found the punk in MRR, which I loved. I wish I'd known or delved into the social side of stuff. I would have made many, many friends, I think.
I have a lot of things to say about the internet and how it made effort obsolete. It's really not controversial like I normally am, it's just that now the effort and time that went into acquiring information -- in this case, punk -- has been reduced to next to nothing. If knowledge is power, it's only a click away, and the process what the substantive aspect of the having of knowledge. That's great for the idea that "information wants to be free," bad for a screen on all the social choices that go into knowledge, if this makes sense.