Phish is a lot like sports. Let me explain. People who are large sports fans spend a lot of time watching sports. But its more than just watching. The radio has call-in shows discussing the most inane details of games.
People keep statistics about games, players.
They know detail after detail about this specific baseball game from 1978. People read sports newsgroups , they have libraries of games, and some of them play sports on the side. Most importantly, sports makes some people feel really good . Whatever it is they get out of sports they value. They follow their teams to the end of the earth.