In the sense that being online connected me to those communities, it was certainly a contributor. But I was online during the 90s and not fannish; I was on Usenet but never looked at the, oh, rec.arts.sf.fandom or similar groups. (Pretty much all my participation was in the rec groups for more mainstream hobbies of mine, like rec.food.cooking and rec.bicycling, plus the sci. groups for my job-type interests, and talk.bizarre for silliness.)

I was traveling for three years and out of touch from mainstream media (as well as not having regular online access) and returned to the US just as the second Harry Potter movie was released. My sister-in-law, a children's librarian, recommended it, so I rented the first movie, watched the second in the theater, then went to the library and got all four (at the time) books and devoured them. Then I went online to see if I could find anything else relevant...and I discovered Fuh-Q-Fests and the veela-inc mailing list. :-) That was the beginning of my long descent into fandom....