I was on the social networks before facebook, we called them bulletin boards, or IRC back then, and one of the things you didn't do was write your real name. You could be closer to people that way, you could share things you didn't want people to know about you, and it worked.

The reason it worked, was that you would gather based on your interests and there was no giant company optimizing things for clicks - that is also why the original reddit worked so well: there is a small space for your niche.