[antonvs]

> Do people genuinely enjoy this part of socializing

I don't think it's so much "enjoy" as just that many people treat knowledge as a social phenomenon, not something to gather from external sources on your own. It's not so much "what are the facts" as "what are my peers thinking and saying about this?"

This also goes a long way towards explaining the popularity of comment sections on sites like HN and reddit, as well as why there are large groups of people who treat non-factual information as though it were factual.