>>81585552Deviantart was so widely used when they had that green UI. I'm bri ish, and those anime were obscure outside of the internet kids, you would never find them on TV.
I got my grandads old windows xp computer (white crt monitor and all) as he never used it in 2008, spent literally every second of my free time on the internet for years. Looking at popular or recommended videos on youtube, you would eventually come across those anime clips and find a community of nerdy kids. Also used to watch the full episodes on a website that (I think) was called megaupload
I was open about all of it in school, also open about being a furry and eventually a brony, people gave me shit for it but I also found the other weeb kids at my school and we instantly became best friends.
Played alot of HL1 mods and those communities were cool too, this was a video I made in 2014, got half a million views and then I forgot the password lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saJuTDYzIHM