They were, but at that point it was a truly mass market. I poorly expressed the population that I was trying to describe.

Circa 1999-2000, you could IM random ICQ users and they were not 100% dickpic creeps. It was almost like a pre-AOL internet for people in the know.

I remember! Selecting profiles on ICQ as if on a dating website, and talking with someone in China! No dickpic, just naive remote friendship, well in fact he did fall in love with me but… wait was it only because we had no numeric cameras at the time?