Question to group: community online

It appears that at least some of y'all have been able to meet people and find a sense of community online. This has never really worked for me: I read plenty of online forums (and have for years), but I don't/can't keep track of the individual people-- their names don't stick in my head from session to session-- so it's like reading the comments of so many anonymous people: interesting reading, but no sense of community. The only exception is here, where I'm reading comments from people I've met face to face.

Does anyone else have this problem? And for those of you who have successfully found community online, was there some trick to getting past this "anonymous phase"? How did you single out specific people to get to know better, in the midst of comments from maybe hundreds of people (or maybe you just hang out in smaller groups?)

Edit: I was really hoping for some response to this post but didn't get any; I'm bumping it just in case it was missed the first time. (Sorry if you already saw it.)

Classical music

One of my dirty secrets is that I find most classical music boring: take me to a concert and I bring something along to do. There are two exceptions to the rule. The first is when the music involves something truly unusual: an unusual sounding instrument, clever quotations, interesting rhythms, unusual chords, or the like.

The second, more important exception is when it's music I already know. I love Beethoven's 5th Symphony, and even "sing along" with it, because I listened to it a lot in high school. I love Holst's Planets. And if the piece is something I've performed before, I'll be bopping in my seat and singing along.

I don't know if my experience is unusual-- plenty of people like to go to concerts to hear new music, so it can't be universal-- but it does lead to a few interesting points.
1) I should make a point of putting more classical music on in the background, while I'm doing things. Eventually, I will become familiar with it via osmosis, and thus have a new piece of music to enjoy.
2) Miriam should be exposed to as much classical music as possible, so that it is familiar to her.
3) I wonder if the success of folksongs and pop songs lie partly in their repetitiveness: by the end of a pop song it's already familiar to you, because it's the third or fourth time through the refrain.

Interestingly, I have the same reaction to instrumental jazz: much of it seems random and dull to me, unless it's familiar or unusual. In both classical and jazz music, I think it helps to have a background in the genre: someone who knows a lot about jazz can really appreciate what the musicians and composers are doing, and enjoy the cleverness of it in a way that a newcomer cannot.