People usually have an image of hanging out with preindustrial people in the middle of a jungle. While interesting, I wonder if there is any such research into modern culture. For example, is there any research into the fanbases of sports teams or music personalities?
Depending on the group, each fan base has a form of loose societal bonding of varying strengths. How these groups form and create these bonds when the members don't often meet should tell us something about the fundamental social wiring of human beings.
Personally, I have a hard time fitting in to new social groups. Yet tons of people on the internet can identify as fans of the same pop group or tv show. For example, the K Pop group Girl's Generation fans call themselves SONEs, (pronounced so-won) which just spontaneously arose form the lyrics of one of their songs. No one planned that. Yet thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands (who knows) of people came together with this common identity.
If that phenomenon isn't worthy of study, I don't know what is.
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