OTTAWA

As a child, Roger DuPuis knew he was different.

While his friends played outside, DuPuis spent his time researching the ins and outs of public transportation.

A self-described "transit enthusiast,'' the 34-year-old from Scranton, Pa., was fascinated with streetcars, railroads and buses.

As he grew up, he spent his free time photographing streetcars and travelling to cities around the continent to ride various trams, trolleys and subways.

DuPuis thought he was the only young person with this unusual hobby -- until he logged online. Through message boards and chat rooms, he found an online transit subculture.

"It's gratifying,'' he says. "Maybe we weren't so weird after all.''

The Internet has long been known as a catch-all forum for oddities, but now more than ever it's bringing together people who deal in the strange and uncommon.

Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace double as meeting places for people with every weird interest imaginable.

Love to create art or clothing out of duct tape? Join the Facebook group.

Are your walls cluttered with your growing collection of glossy fish posters? Just log on to fishposters.com.

Looking for someone who likes to be locked up in antique handcuffs or even thumbcuffs? Check the message board at handcuffs.org.

For some, these online acquaintances help lessen the isolation or embarrassment that comes with a fascination for the unusual.

Alex Lee, a 22-year-old educational assistant also obsessed with bus photography, says chat rooms have made him feel accepted.

"Some of my friends think I'm weird, they don't understand why I love buses,'' he says.

"I think it's great to know other people that share my hobby. I'd like to build my own website someday.''

Warren Thorngate, a social psychology professor at Carleton University, says that for most people, finding someone online who shares an obscure interest can be reassuring.

But he cautions against placing too much importance on cyber-friendships.

"We might call all of these people friends,'' he says. "But if we're sick we're not going to be zipping online to people who share an interest in photographing buses to help us get well. We'll rely on our face-to-face friends.''

Web relationships can also have negative effects for society in general.

Thorngate says people who spend time building online relationships spend less time getting involved in their own communities, and even less time talking about general interests like politics or world issues.

And while collecting antique handcuffs and making duct tape art are fairly harmless hobbies, there is a darker side to online subcultures.

For every website dedicated to an obscure but tame pastime, there are plenty of Facebook groups or chat rooms devoted to strange sexual fetishes -- from having sex with a gas mask on to eroticizing medical procedures.

And there is no shortage of sites that promote dangerous behaviour.

Pro-anorexia and bulimia message boards and chat rooms offer tips on how to sustain and hide eating disorders.

Japanese websites for depressed people allowed more than 50 people to create group-suicide pacts between 2004 and 2005.

Thorngate says that online forums can create a sort of group mentality, egging people on to do things they may have otherwise avoided.

"If you know that there are people out there who share an interest and you want to do crazy things, and they want to do crazy things, we would predict that the chance of doing crazy things would increase.''