Historically, The Scene
consisted of communities of computer users engaged in particular activities but often loosely grouped.
The loose grouping of Scene activities comes from the era when the Internet was inaccessible to the general public. Bulletin Board Systems were the principal means for savvy computer users to connect online, communicate and exchange data. To encourage more people to use their services, boards often hosted various computer-specific activities and subjects. It led to online communities engaged in some intertwined topics that evolved, were grouped, and became the Scene.
The dark underground
(The Warez Scene) is an anarchically governed free-for-all that has nonetheless developed its own codes of behavoir, ethics, activites, and most, importantly, hierarchies of prestige.
As of 2022, a couple of professional published books cover The Scene and its influences on modern online culture. The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy and The Modem World: A Prehistory of Social Media.
Author of The Future Was Here - The Commodore Amiga, Jimmy Maher, has written two excellent articles on early pirating and the pirate scenes on both the Apple II and Commodore 64 computers. A Pirate’s Life for Me, Part 1: Don’t Copy That Floppy! and A Pirate’s Life for Me, Part 2: The Scene.
The creative underground