Social rejection and perceived refusal by the opposite sex would do just make those individuals – mostly young men – drift into developing a relationship with chatbots whose responses are entirely positive, even to the point of agreeing with anything that person says. It doesn’t help that a sheltered lifestyle instead of daily social interaction would make things worse. Also, I’m of the opinion that it was only after the late 90s we started to see Japanese-style introverted subcultures and lifestyles being introduced and appropriated elsewhere as soon as these were disseminated through online fora, and those individuals appropriating them thought they relate to those subcultures.