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Really great article in the NPR a few months ago (sorry we just caught it now) by Michaelangelo Matos about how the internet helped to shape the rave scene into what it is (or what it not is today). While the internet certainly made it easier to find out about parties, share information, and hook up with people you meet, it turned a culture that was once very underground into something much more public. Below is an excerpt from the article:

In 1989, a popular Brooklyn DJ named Frankie Bones went to England and played a party called Energy, going on at 6 a.m. in front of 25,000 people. Inspired, Bones decided to start throwing parties of his own, bringing raves to the warehouses of Brooklyn. Soon after, scenes in L.A. and San Francisco began to sprout. Once the coasts adapted the new party style, things went inland, as loose regional congregations began to make themselves into a unified scene. Like drops in a pond, eventually their ripples began to touch.

At first, the connections were done the old-fashioned way. By 1994, there was already kind of an established network of party-throwers and partygoers [in Detroit], says Rob Theakston, a Detroit rave veteran. At that point, the scene was maybe 200 kids max. Everything was very phone-based. [You'd] call the phone lines the day of to get directions, and even then, a lot of the direction lines would just give the vicinity because you would already know: Oh, Harper and Van Dyke thats the old theater. We know where the partys going to be. They wouldnt give you the exact address for the authorities to find out.

Many times, ravers had good reason for such secrecy. I worked so much overtime trying to talk about how the rave scene wasnt all about drugs, says Ariel Meadow Stallings, who published and edited the rave zine Lotus in Seattle during the late 90s. It was very noble of me, and I still do believe it wasnt all about drugs. But it is a drug culture. Even if youre not on drugs, the culture of the party is determined by the fact that there are people there who are.

Its quite a long article, but definitely worth the read. Check out the full article here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2011/07/17/137680680/how-the-internet-transformed-the-american-rave-scene

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NPR: How The Internet Transformed The American Rave Scene ...