>>281415276 (OP)
A lot less connected than today. A lot of people didn't have internet back then. Even for those who had it was dial up, and they charged depending on how much you downloaded, so getting videos for most was unthinkable. You could only get short 320x240 videos which looked like crap, a good VHS back then looked a lot better than digital media.
Downloading images would take quite a lot of seconds for each image. If you were a teenager you couldn't download as much as you'd like, because once again, keeping the line open meant you'd pay, unless your parents were loaded that was unthinkable. Oh, and also being connected through dial up meant you couldn't use the phone, so that was another reason why browsing for anime was heavily limited.
Most of the info you'd get would come from local magazines, and some of them would include a CD with media (which was appreciated a lot). Some companies distributed licensed anime in VHS, and there were also fansubs that distributed things that were obscure.
Meeting people before internet was widespread would happen in conventions mostly, or through local magazines, sometimes even in comic stores. In my case I only started hanging around with other anime fans in this century through forums, before that I'd go to anime showings either with one friend or alone, and from there back home. I did have 2 or 3 other kids who were into anime in high school, though, so in the 90s I'd hang mostly with them. There was a local that rented VHS (both licensed and not), so we'd chip in each to rent 3 or 4 to watch the whole night, and if one of the other guys brought their VHS machine home we could even copy them. We'd also copy from each other every CD with anime media we could get.
Also anime for most people was considered something only for kids, watching it after puberty was very weird back then, to the point that many hid their power level at school.
