This also applies to the meatspace.
People are willing to pay a contribution just to be member of a local / niche community. That's why I (with many other) pay a contribution to club to be part of a group where we love to cycle with each other. That's why we (I was part of the crew) had one of the biggest petrolhead communities (in the Netherlands, in 2005-2010 pre Facebook era) around one specific car (Honda Civic) with hunderds of paying members (and thousand online forum members online every evening, the slowchat topic was the most popular one). 

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