When online video powerhouse Rooster Teeth brought its web culture expo RTX to Australia earlier this year, thousands of locals jumped at the chance to see some of their favourite personalities in the flesh, even as many more were left scratching their heads about what a rooster tooth even was.
While the size and number of online communities like Rooster Teeth's continue to grow, they can often be completely invisible to those not actively engaged, because each member can take part despite being geographically scattered across the world, consuming and contributing from their bedrooms, commutes and workplaces. The chance to meet up together in a physical space, then, is an exciting affair. 
On the back of the first show's success, Rooster Teeth has announced it will return to Sydney in 2017, hosting the brand new International Convention Centre's first major event and bringing more popular internet celebrities you may never have heard of to our shores.
One of those celebrities is Greg Miller, a former writer and host at games media website IGN and currently one of the four faces of online video upstart Kinda Funny. Speaking to Fairfax Media, Miller says content like his naturally creates connections between like-minded people - even over very long distances - which over time grow into communities.
"When I grew up it was very alienating being the only video game fan, the only real hardcore Kevin Smith fan in my friend group. I went and sought out message boards and all these different things to find a connection with these people," he says.
"But now the internet's broken down all these walls, you find the connection through listening to those people, watching those people's videos and actually seeing them and being a part of their lives."
Kevin Smith is himself a good example of the changing face of fandom. Once an inaccessible filmmaker fans would only interact with through his art and interviews, he's now a fixture of podcasts, livestreams and AMAs - even appearing on an early Kinda Funny video.
From the outside, Kinda Funny's output of videos, podcasts and livestreams is a never-ending series of conversations discussing everything from politics to relationships, karaoke to cyborgs. Yet the theme is the honesty and positivity of the hosts, which bleeds over to the community.
"When I was podcasting at IGN I always used to say that if you listened to the show you are one of my best friends," Miller says. "You know more about me than my friends back home - in terms of my day to day life and what's going on - more about me than my parents".
Miller estimates the dedicated Kinda Funny fanbase to be around 500,000 strong, but with the content split over various YouTube channels, audio podcasting services and Patreon (a recurring crowdfunding service through which 14,000 fans pay Kinda Funny a total of $US55,000 a month to keep the lights on), it's difficult to tell for sure.
"The way I always say it is that I beat PewDiePie for an award," Miller says, referring to both the 'Most Entertaining Online Personality' award at SXSW and 'Trending Gamer' at the Game Awards, fan-voted accolades that he received despite the Swedish megastar also being nominated. While he might not have the most fans, Miller says, his style of content means almost all of the fans are personally invested.
"People got me through my divorce, and cancer, and [quitting IGN to start] Kinda Funny," Miller says. "People listen to us and consider us internet celebrities, but they really listen to us for the companionship. What we do is get people through data entry jobs, what we do is get people through long drives, long haul truckers, UPS drivers. We get people through workouts."
"At the end of the day we are a bunch of people in our spare bedroom making videos but then you get these kind of opportunities where it's like, yeah let's go talk to the Australian fans that we know we have but have never been able to get out and see."
RTX Sydney 2017 will take place on   February 4-5, with tickets available from   July 7.
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