I love your comment. I think it could apply to any number of hobbies and probably says something about how we build community. Maybe your description in large part applies to every successful community.
I've been thinking a lot about that lately and a lot of communities, especially those with users lying to themselves labelling their will to always buy more stuff as "Hobby", are just big Circle Jerks. I've been part of it, and still am, but let's face the reality, those forums became the field of brands playing with consumers.
