Gaming

Not really computer games.

Camarilla. A LARP that I was part of for about ten years. I met hundreds of people. A few girlfriends. There were chapters all over the world with a couch to crash on and a group of nerds into the same shit I was. I drifted from my local group and they fell apart a few years later. I've recently reconnected with some remnants of that group and in the blink of an eye I've found twenty friends and have a busy social life.

JiuJitsu. I don't see it as an art. I don't see it as a way to beat someone up. I see it as IRL PvP. I got into it from the early Joe Rogan podcasts where he had obscure interesting guests rather than the coco bananas direction he's been on for the last 10+ years.

World of Warcraft 2. A pirated copy got me a job at my local collectible card store. They had a computer in the store but weren't IT nerdy kids like I was. I'd downloaded it from a pirate BBS, YES BBS, that a friend at school ran. I like that Steam sees developers getting paid but man was DOS piracy next level easy, you were more likely to need the "decoder" that came with the game to act as the license.