These days, even if you run across another anime fan irl, with 50+ shows coming out every season and broadly available, it is not too likely you are even watching any of the same shows

PC Gaming has the same issue. Just 15 years ago if you were a PC gamer you were probably aware of 90%+ of the games on PC that were worth playing, and you’d probably played a significant percentage of them. If you had a friend who was also a PC gamer the odds were extremely high that you played some of the same games. These days it feels like you really have to go out of your way to make the same thing happen.